Your Mundus mentor is your trusted advisor
All universities in the Mundus Journalism programme offer career services such as counselling, workshops and career fairs; however, we felt that the Mundus family could offer an even stronger support relying on our tight and international alumni network. Hence, in 2019 we came up with the idea of crafting our own Mundus Mentorship programme, in which new graduates connect with alumni. In this way, they can establish a fruitful learning relationship aimed at professional growth.
Since the first edition of the mentorship, we have been carefully matching Mundus alumni with recent graduates across more than 100 countries based on career goals, experiences and preferred areas of guidance. Among others, our mentees received advice on how to build a network in a given city or country, write successful applications to UN or EU positions, make the first steps as freelance journalists and navigate the job search after graduating from the Mundus programme. The basic idea is that transition into work life can be smoother and less overwhelming if you can reach out to someone who has successfully been through the same experience and is willing to share his/her best tips with you.
Mentoring is all about a one-to-one relationship, in which an experienced mentor helps the mentee to identify his/her professional goals as well as exploring the avenues to achieve them. Every year, the Mundus Mentorship is taken up by many graduates and alumni and this allows us to create meaningful connections within a huge variety of journalism and media professions. Simply put, a mentor is a trusted advisor.
What does a Mundus Mentorship relation look like?
Once we match mentees and mentors and send them the mentorship guidelines, we only set the basis for the start of the relationship; in fact, it's only when they meet and get to know each other that the mentorship has officially started!
Usually, since both our alumni and new graduates are living and working all around the world, most of the mentorship meetings happen online. In some cases, however, we have had couples meeting in person, as there are lively Mundus communities in European cities such as Berlin, Amsterdam, London and Brussels.
The shape of the relationship between mentees and mentors is open and up to each couple, so at the beginning it is usual for them to establish preferred channels of communication, frequency of meetings and objectives of the mentorship. However, three features are common to each mentorship relation: sense of community, mutual understanding and intercultural perspective – the emblems of the Mundus spirit!
To give you an idea of the Mundus Mentorship relation, here you can find a list of the most discussed themes within the Mundus Mentorship programme:
- how to build a network in journalism and media
- choosing a career path after graduation
- exchanging job openings and opportunities
- writing stronger applications and CVs
- living and working abroad
My mentor has been very helpful. So helpful that I don't even remember anymore that he was officially designated as my "mentor" a couple of months ago. I can say he is a friend.
I think it's definitely a really good match: even from the first call she gave me such useful tips for freelancing and she definitely has the experience in the field I want to get more experienced in. I really felt very empowered.