We - at EIT Digital Alumni - have recently celebrated the first anniversary of our mentorship programme: this was launched at the end of 2017 and has turned 1 now receiving an overwhelmingly positive response.
I, Shikhar Singh, hail from India and graduated from the EIT Digital Master School in 2016 in the Distributed Systems track. I am now working as a Project Lead. EIT Digital has had a tremendous influence on me from the moment I signed up for the programme in the summer of 2014. The support for me from EIT Digital, my entry university and the then enrolled students was overwhelming. I had never travelled outside of my country before this, let alone live abroad. And I don’t think it would have been possible to survive in Europe without this support. And hence when I graduated, I felt a strong urge both to give back to the EIT Digital community and help out students in similar situation as I was: the answer to this need was a Mentor-Mentee programme.
I immediately got in contact with the Alumni Board, who couldn’t have been more assuring and supportive. Since a Mentorship programme was one of the points on their agenda, they fully backed the idea of having a bottom-up initiative where alumni come together to guide and mentor younger members. And so we launched the programme in the last months of 2017.
The programme has proven to be a stepping stone for current students: our mentors have helped mentees become ace public speakers, land cool internships and jobs and have acted as a close friend in times of tricky personal challenges. One of the mentees struck gold and got an opportunity to work at Ericsson with the help of their mentor. Another landed an internship with a large corporation last summer, and they will now start their thesis there. Thus exemplifying the saying, ‘Success is where preparation and opportunity meet’.
And not only the mentee, but the mentor benefits a lot from the program as well: as one of our mentor puts it, ''Knowing students that need help and guidance helps envision new ways of addressing different challenges''.
We have now in our network more than 50 esteemed alumni working in big companies, running their own startups, doing cutting edge research or PhDs in top universities. If you are also motivated to make a difference in someone's professional life, then start your amazing journey as a mentor right now.
Or if you are looking for an experienced guide to help you out on topics like relocation, deep tech topics, finding an internship or a job, university-related processes or just want a friend who has been in your shoes, then sign up for our mentoring programme as a mentee and you will be matched with an alumni mentor. But keep in mind that this is a volunteer initiative and depends completely on the willingness and proactiveness of both mentor and mentees.
And for all of those already part of our mentoring programme: this is the final call to submit your improvements and raise your concerns through the Feedback survey here.
EIT Digital Alumni and EIT Digital are supported by the EIT, a body of the European Union