The Haileybury Society recently joined forces with Aluminati to launch what they have described as “an exciting careers e-mentoring scheme” to their new leavers.
Daniel Watts, MD of Aluminati, happens to be an old boy of the College and lent much personal support to the enterprise, advising on the marketing of the platform to both alumni and students.
Using the College Careers Fair as a “soft” launch event, potential mentors who had been approached by the College were invited to give talks to the Upper VI on their respective career paths. Along with the speakers, a number of other alumni who had expressed interest were sent online registration forms so that their basic information could be put on the system before it actually went live.
Jane Everard of the Haileybury Society is delighted with the progress to date, with in excess of 100 students and about 40 mentors involved so far: “We are hoping the scheme will grow and grow,” she says. “We charge current parents £450 for their children to have lifetime membership of The Haileybury Society, so in this day and age we have to offer a valuable lifelong service in addition to the usual Annual Reunions and social events. Haileybury has a long tradition of service to others.”
“We are a separate charity from the school although closely involved with them, and they were clearly in favour of us doing it – our mission statement is to support Haileyburians past and present”, says Jane. “Historically we have offered an in-house Careers Fair so this was the next progressive step.”
The advantages of the scheme they have chosen include its inherent flexibility and intuitive design features which ensure the ability of mentors to remain in control of their time commitments and fully manage their mentoring relationships. They can choose which media are used for mentoring, email, telephone, or even face to face, and also whether they are able to add value to the mentoring relationship by reviewing CVs and so forth. Of particular interest to many aspiring candidates is advice on how to approach interviews, and the prospect of work placement or internships where mentors are in a position to offer them is regarded by many as the “Holy Grail” of a careers service.
“I would have no hesitation is recommending Daniel and Aluminati!” says Jane, “The Haileybury Society is very new to the e-mentoring software and neither myself or our Administrative Assistant are very technical – Dan and his team have been endlessly patient with us and are always very quick to respond to any of our queries or little glitches. It’s a good working relationship and they are thoroughly professional.”
