Mentoring | LSFM and Industry

LSFM Mentoring is a unique way to link industry with selected undergraduates. Thanks to volunteer mentors from the world of work who make time to support our final year or level 2 students in an academic year.  Each mentor brings their unique experience of the job market to help our students, during their course, as they plan goals and pursue passions for a career. In the past our mentors and mentees have explored everything from work opportunities to discussing dissertations. Pairs are in contact at least 6 times across semesters, so may be around 6-12 hours during the academic year. Contact time is flexible and pairs choose how to meet: face-to-face, talking on the phone, having a web chat or using other online platforms.

Mentors are offered an induction to mentoring, written guidelines and thereafter the student-mentee liaises with their mentor. If you’re interested in being a mentor, read the introduction to mentoring and download the form to register your interest anytime: LSFM Mentoring_Introduction  |  LSFM_MENTOR_Registration-Form

LSFM Mentoring is a partnership between the University of Lincoln School of Film & Media and Careers & Employability. Our approach aims for a light-touch: we link a mentor and student-mentee together, provide an induction, give a mentoring handbook for guidance and request online feedback at the end of the year (as we develop our mentoring that started as a pilot in 2014, so it is work in progress).  We have a mentors’ database for interested professionals to register, then at the start of an academic year we get in touch to check availability and update career details.

There is a call-out for our students to apply (so Level 2 and 1 students need to check their University email accounts). Then undergraduates who are shortlisted are paired with an available mentor on our database. Successful mentees must attend a 1-hour briefing session on-campus and will receive a mentoring handbook for students. Also careers advice is available to students from the Enterprise team and ongoing employability support a couple of years or so after graduation.

Please note: Our mentoring is not a matching service! The process is that we do our best to pair like-minded people together from the data we have received. Some mentors are our alumni so they can empathise with many undergraduate issues.