Peer Mentorship

What is the Mentorship Program?

IranWiC Peer Mentorship is a recurring 4-month program with the aim of helping our community members to enhance their professional growth, develop and learn new skills under the guidance and advice of a more experienced member.  In this program, we do our best to match members based on their needs and skills so that they can receive the best help that they need.

Sign up:

If you are interested to participate in our program as a mentor or mentee, please sign up in our mentorship platform:

https://mentorship.iranwic.org/signup

What are the benefits of mentoring?

For the mentee:

In today’s complex and highly competitive world of Tech and Academia, having a mentor can have a major impact on people’s success. Whether seeking advice on how to succeed in your research and school work, how to find a job or internship, how to enhance your professional development or even how to start your own business, mentoring can help to ensure a successful outcome.

For the mentor:

Mentoring gives you a great opportunity to enhance other community members’ professional/academic life by sharing the knowledge and experience you have earned in the past. Mentorship is a two-way street. As a mentor, there are various ways you can benefit as well. Mentoring can facilitate your own professional growth and enhance your skills. In addition, mentoring allows you to strengthen your leadership skills which is a great value in today’s Tech world.

For the community:

Mentoring can be used to develop cultures of inclusive excellence which can support the development of diverse workplace in the community and across all genders and nationalities by providing a better path to success for the underrepresented groups.

Who is eligible for this program?

Any Iranian woman active in the field of computing is eligible to enter the IranWiC’s mentorship matching pool. This program is best suited to those who seek guidance on a target goal in the span of 3-4 months. The examples of mentoring activities you will receive include: Job haunting and interview preparation, resume/cover letter revision, career/professional development advice, grad school advice, and scientific/technical advice.
Having clarity on your goals and sharing it with us during the registration process allows us to find the best person to help you.

 

What is the timeline of each round in the next year?

We plan to hold 2 rounds of matching in 2022. The timeline for our first round is as follows:

Mentors Registration Deadline	Open year-around
Mentees Registration Deadline	01/15/2022
Mentees Preparation Workshop	01/13/2022 – 6:00 PM PST
Pairing Starts	01/17/2022 – 9:00 AM PST
Pairing Deadline	01/31/2022 – 12:00 AM PST
Pairing Ends	06/01/2022

What happens after the registration? 

Once you have completed your questionnaire, you will be brought directly to the mentor directory. This is a list of mentors that has been curated for you based on your skills, goals, tenure and preferences you submitted in your questionnaire. The Mentorship Program will provide you with 3 mentors to choose from. Click View Profile to review the mentor’s profile. Once you have reviewed all profiles, you can add the mentors you’d be interested in to your list by clicking on Add to List. Now is time to rank your mentors in order of preference. This will be the order we reach out to your mentors based on their availability. If you do not get your first choice, it is due to the availability of your mentor. After you rearrange your mentors, click Submit. It is the mentee’s responsibility to reach out to their mentors and kick start the process. It is important that the mentee and mentor decide on the number of sessions and a schedule that fits the program timeline as the pairing and mentor commitments are set to end by end of each mentorship round.

Next steps after finishing the mentorship round:

We hope that you have achieved the goals you had in mind. If you are interested in continuing your sessions, you can apply for the next round of the program and request an extension to your sessions if you would like to continue your sessions with your mentor with the same frequency, otherwise, you will be unpaired in the platform and can request your mentor to continue your relationship in a mutually preferred format. The network you have built during this program stays with you forever. So feel free to ask your mentor how you can stay connected in the future.