It starts on Day 1
The benefit of a formal mentorship is that there is a clear start date. In our case, a mentorship begins with a formal application to the mentor. In this entry application, we ask for a clear and defined goal statement, such as “I want to change careers” or “I’m looking to extend my skillset”.
Additionally to that, we ask mentees to describe their goal in their own words. In this part, we often receive very unique answers, like what new tech they want to learn or what kind of career they’re looking for.
This goal seems like a quick form field to fill out, but it’s a very important step in the grand scheme of things, as mentors and mentees will start talking, planning and working in regards to this goal.
Success can’t be measured short-term
A goal, in the best case, is something that you’re trying to achieve in a longer period of time. Having short-term goals (“I want to read a book”) is fine, but for a mentorship, the work often only pays off after some longer time (“I want to read 20+ books this year to strengthen my writing skills”).
Unfortunately, not a lot of people have this patience. That’s why a lot of mentees already quit in the first week (hence why we offer a 7 day trial - formal mentorship isn’t for everyone!). However, as soon as people start working with their mentors for a month or more, the gears really start turning, the guidance starts to compound and success can be measured.
Exit Survey
Mentorships can go on for a long time. However, most of them are done at some point. On average, this happens on MentorCruise after 2 - 3 months. That being said, many mentees have been with us since the start, over a year ago!
If a mentee decides that the mentorship has been going on for long enough, it comes to the cancellation - and with that, the exit survey.
We’re in this great position, that not every cancellation is something bad (even though we lose a user and valued customer!). Often, it just means that the mentee has reached their goal and doesn’t have the need or possibility to grow beyond that (e.g. if the goal was to change careers - and it happened).
The exit survey is really, really simple: A star-based rating, and a prompt to write a few short words, about if they reached their goal, what we could do better, and what the mentor could do better. With those pieces of information, we can measure the success rate of our mentorships and have qualitative results too, that help us make our service better.