The future of your association relies heavily on your ability to continually attract and retain members as they plan their career advancement in your industry.
Did you know that mentoring is key to member career planning – and to your association’s membership recruitment and retention strategies?
Appealing to these young professionals through your membership recruitment and retention strategies and highlighting the benefits they seek helps to ensure a steady stream of new, long-term members.
The Power of Online Mentoring
Mentoring fosters personal and professional growth and development between mentors and protégés involved in your profession or industry. By bringing together mentors and mentees, you solidify your organization’s role as a resource dedicated to promoting professional development and enhancing the industry you serve. Providing an online mentoring platform makes it even easier and more flexible for your members to connect.
Students and new graduates often seek a mentor to help them grow professionally as they enter the workforce. Just think how powerful it would be if you could support the next generation of members by connecting them with members who are experienced professionals and want to help those early in their careers. Especially in a time of significant workforce movement, giving your members access to mentors who can guide them to the next step in their career path is an invaluable member benefit.
Benefits for Mentors:
- Get the personal satisfaction that comes with making an impact
- Shape the future with an expanded network of professional colleagues
- Affirm professional competence
- Create a legacy
- Recognize and meet specific certification and accreditation requirements
Benefits for Protégés:
- Improve perspective on the workplace
- Expand industry knowledge
- Refine interpersonal skills
- Increase self-esteem and confidence in professional situations
- Gain advice about work-life balance
- Obtain networking experience
- Attain guidance from, and access to, a professional role model
- Identify growth opportunities
Connecting these members through an online “mentor board” is an ideal approach in today’s fast-paced, mobile-driven environment. Offering a mentor board supplements your association’s career resources, including your job board, career fairs, networking events, and continuing education offerings. Adding this tool to your membership recruitment and retention strategies turns your association into the one-stop, go-to resource for career development in your industry.
YM Careers MentorBoard
YM Careers MentorBoard is designed to help you facilitate mentorships with early-career professionals through online mentoring. It gives your student and new graduate members the ability to set up their own accounts and profiles, with all the information needed to qualify as a “mentee”. They can then search user profiles and initiate contact with a potential mentor. Later in the member journey, those same young professionals can share their experience by becoming mentors. This keeps both new and renewing members engaged and active with your association – everyone wins.
MentorBoard can help your association:
- Create networking opportunities for your members. Mentors and protégés can create searchable, anonymous profiles to help them find and connect with one another. Users can add links to external sites, such as blogs or publications, to provide more details about their areas of expertise or interest.
- Become the go-to resource for career development. Transfer business knowledge and experience among your members & strengthen the future of your industry.
- Create custom messages and resources. Customize your MentorBoard’s content and resources to facilitate more productive professional relationships.
MentorBoard can provide your association with:
- Detailed reporting to track MentorBoard activity
- Easy account and profile setup. Allow users to create their own accounts and profiles with all the information needed to qualify them as a mentor or mentee.
- Private search that allows mentors and mentees to search user profiles and initiate contact with each other. Email addresses are kept confidential from both users until contact is accepted.
