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About Speed Mentoring

At this session, which is focused on career and professional development, you will rotate around four different mentors, spending 15 minutes with each, to gain different perspectives on a personal professional issue you are seeking to resolve.

This session is being run as a collaboration between the Universities of Bath, Cambridge, Kent, Oxford, Oxford Brookes, Sussex and King’s College London. If offered a place you will have the opportunity to participate in speed mentoring sessions with academics from a selection of the participating institutions. Those academics may or may not be based in your disciplinary area. The focus is on career development more generally.

Objectives

You will have the opportunity to:

• Gain perspectives on your career development challenges
• Consider new approaches in a space away from your normal working environment
• Increase your confidence
• Identify the missing piece from your CV and develop your professional profile, to put towards ADRs and promotion applications
• Build a support network outside your own team or work area to draw on in the future

Target audience

The session is open to early career researchers (ECRs). At Sussex, ECR is defined as staff on a research-only contract at grades 6-8, broadly encompassing research assistants, postdoctoral researchers and research fellows. 

If you are unsure of your eligibility, please contact the organising committee from your institution at researchstaffoffice@sussex.ac.uk.

Registration

As a Mentee

Have you ever wished you could get 15 minutes with a senior colleague to ask their advice on how they would handle something? Or wondered how others approach challenging problems? This is your opportunity to find out!

In order to benefit fully, in advance of the session we will ask you to:

• Think about a problem, issue or challenge on which you would like input
• Identify any options you may be considering and think about the advantages and disadvantages of each
• Note down a one-minute description of yourself and stage of your research degree to provide context for mentors

Our mentors work across a variety of disciplines, in mid- to senior-level positions from other institutions. Mentors will provide advice from their own experience, and may or may not be based in your disciplinary area. The focus is on career development more generally, and offering you different perspectives from outside your work bubble. 

Further guidance for mentees can be found on the University's Organisational Development mentoring webpage.

As a Mentor

Once the speed mentoring part of the session begins, we will sort you into breakout rooms with each of your assigned mentees in turn, and someone from our team will keep an eye on timings. You should get 15 minutes with each mentee, with five minutes in between while we set up new pairings. You will not know in advance who your mentees are.

Part of the experience for both parties is to have a short, effective career development conversation in a time-limited window. As a mentor, you will provide advice from your own experience. To ensure that the arrangement is productive and meaningful for both the mentee and mentor, you will need to foster the right skills to create an environment for growth.

Further guidance for mentors can be found on the University's Organisational Development mentoring webpage.

Visit OD's mentoring webpage to find out more about the mentoring support available at Sussex.

Feedback - in 2023, 100% of participants enjoyed the event and recommended to others

''I found it massively helpful, especially just for making me feel better about how I am doing currently.'' - from a Mentee.

''Depends a lot on the person, but had lots of helpful and most importantly kind feedback.'' - from a Mentee.

''I found the advice genuine drawing on their life experiences. My mentors were very kind and empathetic.'' - from a Mentee.

''15min was about the right amount of time to give advice on a single issue when knowledge of the issue was quite general. It's interesting how some of the issues are quite universal and field independent.'' - from a Mentor.

''It was very enjoyable and interesting -- and chellenging -- talking with the mentees. I felt that I could share some of my expereinces with them that were relevant to the questions they were asking - so I hope that I was useful to them. I found some of the questions very thought provoking -- and that was a good experience for me too. it made me glad that I was no longer navigating the early stages of a research / academic career!'' - from a Mentor.

''It was nice to hear about the mentees' aspirations and career paths as well as sharing my own experience.'' - from a Mentor.