Mentoring, HR & Start-Ups | Rohan Dickinson on The #SocialRecruiting Show

Mentoring is for short and long term goals

This week’s guest was Rohan Dickinson and he’s so passionate about mentoring within HR. He’s set-up his own business to promote the power of mentoring in the startup/scale-up space. We invited him on the show to chat about why mentoring is as important as learning & development. As well as, how will HR benefit from mentoring programmes and what will startups and scale-ups gain from prioritising this on their people roadmap.

To open the show, we ask Rohan about his experience of mentoring.

“Mentoring can be a fluffy subject, but I’ve had really good experiences” and “they [mentors] have seriously been people to lean on and get advice, whether it’s functional advice or skills-based advice, but it’s genuinely helped me – and with other people, I’ve found it’s been beneficial to them”.

We went on to ask, so what is a mentor and why would you need one?. Rohan tells us a mentor is, “experience-led – someone who has got the experience and leading with that and trying to help someone else” from his own experience, he has sought to engage a mentor to, “it’s two parts – normally it’s in my role because I have gaps in terms of how to deliver or do my role” and “the other side is career”.

Setting expectations as a mentor and mentee

Equally important, on the other side of mentoring is the actual mentor. We ask Rohan, what’s the benefit to them in being a mentor?.  His opinion is, “mentoring is a soft management or soft leadership opportunity. You’re helping someone in their career or helping someone in their role and that’s rewarding”.

We go on to discuss approaching mentors and Rohan provides insight into the preparation required by the mentee.

“the mentor will go, can you actually identify some stuff we are actually going to work on” and “you might identify some really cool stuff to work on. However, a contracting and chemistry session is important when it comes to mentoring”.

If that wasn’t enough, below you’ll hear Rohan talk about:

• Accessing mentoring via University Alumnis 
• What are the benefits for Mentors and Mentees 
• How to increase retention through mentoring 
• The value of implementing mentorship into a startup
• Setting clear expectations and taking accountability as a mentee 
• The positive impact of HR peers as mentors 

Thank you to our fabulous sponsor EnterpriseAlumni