Abstract:

Mentoring is a widely used development tool that has shown a positive impact on people's effectiveness, confidence, and professional development. Therefore, for the Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral, a mentoring relationship is a space that promotes a culture of knowledge, experience, and networking through multilevel and intergenerational participation between outstanding professionals in the industry and students. We expected that a mentoring program can: 1) Prepare students to achieve their professional and employment goals, 2) Increase the probability of job placement and 3) Generate networking spaces to identify opportunities in future projects. In this paper, we present a methodology using Hudson's cycle of change and renewal to implement a pilot e-mentoring program in two versions for students who have completed 80% of the curriculum and come from areas of administration, communication, and engineering. Based on common interests between the mentor and the student, confidential conversations are held in individual sessions through Teams or Zoom platforms, with the aim that the student can make small transitions, making minor changes in their current situation to pass from being stagnant -the doldrums- to having a renewed energy -go for it-. The methodology also describes the follow-up and accompaniment to the student, which consists of a survey to obtain information on the number of sessions carried out, the level of satisfaction of each session, in addition to the accompaniment. The WhatsApp application was used to guide the student so that they can coordinate and carry out their mentoring. Finally, the methodology describes an analysis of the reports that the mentors delivered at the end of the program about the strengths and areas for improvement of the mentee, as well as the assessments of the level of satisfaction of the mentee students. The results obtained indicate that 60% of the participants completed the program, the level of satisfaction of the students in relation to the mentoring sessions was on average 9, with 10 being the top satisfaction score. Likewise, it is identified that the higher the percentage of career advancement, the greater the probability that the student will finish the program. In addition, the mentors' reports identify the need to strengthen soft skills in students and, regarding the methodology, students and mentors recommend increasing the length of the sessions. In summary, this paper contributes to existing but scarce research on mentoring practices for career and employment development.

Keywords:

E-Mentoring, Higher education, Professional training, Support students, Labour market.