Individual and group mentoring

Mentoring is personal, voluntary and confidential support, provided by an experienced person, known as a ‘mentor’, to a less experienced person, a ‘mentee’, to help them in their career.

The scheme, aimed at both undergraduate students and students from the departments, whether or not they are enrolled directly, has three different strands to serve different purposes:

• Female mentoring, which aims to set up engineer-student mentoring pairs for those who are particularly concerned about the place of women in the engineering profession, their career development and issues related to being a woman in traditionally male fields or roles.
• Mentoring is open to any student with no specific questions or concerns about the engineering profession as a woman and wishing to improve their education by learning about the various aspects of the engineering profession.
• Group mentoring, which takes the form of a meeting every two months where several engineers will be brought together to discuss a specific topic with a group of INSA students.

Objectives and principles

• Here is a guide to helop you find out more.
• Interested in taking part? Students:  Register via the online form for engineering students. 

Timetable for the individual mentoring scheme

September : Information for students

November : Mentor-mentee buffet

From November : Pairing up mentors and mentees

March : Mid-term review

May : End-of-year buffet

Timeline for the group mentoring scheme

Speed meeting at the start of the school year, usually held in November.

Group meetings in December, February and April on topics related to the following issues:

• Consider and discuss the various fields. Students and engineers will be asked for their impressions of the industry as a starting point to improve their knowledge of each branch of the profession and to learn more about the current issues in each of the fields represented. This can help students to get a better picture of INSA's education departments and, in the long run, to be in a better position to consider jobs, types of companies and industries.
• Applying for a job, planning for your first professional experience (internship or job). As this is not a methodology workshop on looking for an internship or job, the purpose of this meeting will be to answer students' questions about what a company expects from an intern or a young graduate. The aim is to help them get a better understanding of the daily working life of an engineer and to understand the link between education and practical application in the field, working in teams.
• My first steps in the company: young graduates (mentors) will be invited to talk about their career path and how they felt when they started working. This meeting could be useful both for the year's graduates and for students who have to do an internship during the year.

Meeting and end-of-year review in May.