Mentor Board: overall purpose and format
AAU Business School is running a mentoring programme matching newly enrolled master students with business executives from the North Denmark Region, who become their mentors. Mentee spots are offered to the master students enrolled at the following programmes: Finance, Marketing, International Business, Organisation and Strategy, and Management Accounting.
Currently, the programme has capacity to include 25 students. The programme is offered to both Danish and International students. The working language is English. Participation in the programme is application-based. The main selection criteria is students’ motivation to start their career in Denmark after graduation and willingness to get insights into the local business culture.
The overall purpose of this programme is two-fold: we help students extend their professional network in the region, and to become more employable; at the same time, we strive to provide local businesses with new, well-qualified employees.
AAU International Business Mentor Board’s mission is to facilitate knowledge and experience sharing between successful mentors and business mentees in order to educate, equip, and inspire students, as well as help them achieve their potential, broaden network, clarify career goals, and become more employable in Denmark. The programme duration is one semester (February-June).
Programme structure
The programme starts in February with a kick-off event where mentors and mentees get to meet for the first time and are provided with necessary tools to start their work together. The main part of the programme consists of one-to-one meetings between mentors and mentees. It is usually mentee’s responsibility to schedule meetings with a mentor and prepare the main points of the agenda. We recommend a minimum of one personal meeting per month. The summer meeting in late May or beginning of June is time to celebrate new skills and contacts, and get together to evaluate the programme and share feedback.
Along the way, we also organize smaller networking events to secure better communication across the whole group and to answer the questions that arise in the mentoring process. These gatherings are of more social nature and are optional. Due to corona restrictions we are very limited in options, but the events we have organised before include: a multi-cultural potluck dinner, a company visit, coffee and cake hygge networking, a lecture with an invited speaker. We are always open to new ideas and aim to make the experience for our participants as involving as possible.
Below is the programme structure diagram.