Within First Month

Have the employee schedule the pre-residency interview with whomever is conducting the interview or finish it on his or her own if it is self-administered.

Have the employee write a bio.

Schedule an interview to be included in Campus Weekly introducing the resident to the campus at large and explaining the residency program.

Choose a mentor with the resident’s interests and career goals in mind.

Mentoring

What is a mentor?

According to Introduction to Mentoring by the APA Centering on Mentoring 2006 Presidential Task Force,

     A mentor is an individual with expertise who can help develop the career of a mentee. A mentor often has  

     two primary functions for the mentee. The career related function establishes the mentor as a coach who

     provides advice to enhance the mentee’s professional performance and development. The psychosocial 

     function establishes the mentor as a role model and support system for the mentee. Both functions 

     provide explicit and implicit lessons related to professional development as well as general work–life 

     balance.

How do we find mentors?

Mentoring relationships are more successful when both parties are fully committed and interested in the relationship.  DO NOT simply assign someone to be the resident’s mentor unless this is a last resort. The assigned person may not wish to have that role and may only agree out of a sense of obligation. Send out a call to solicit volunteer mentors. Ask each volunteer to briefly state his/her areas of strength and specialization both within the UNCG Libraries and in professional organizations. If no one who can compliment the resident's goals and interests volunteers, ask departmental supervisors to suggest possible mentors. Either way, Gerald and/or Kathy B. can then assign a mentor with the resident’s goals and the overall goals of the residency in mind. 

Guidelines:

There should be an initial period of ice-breaking activities such as lunches, attending meetings together outside of the library (new member gatherings hosted by the NCLA, faculty/staff organization meetings, etc. determined by mutual interest), establishing role expectations of both the mentor and mentee, and joint goal setting. 

• Some goals may include: 
• Work on areas of weakness for the mentee, for example, public speaking.  
• Require mentee to attend some trainings by other professional librarians to see how others do it and to learn what formats presentations may take (online, in person, hour long training sessions or lunch talks to short lightening round types of presentations). 
• Require the mentee to give a presentation.  
• Mentors or mentees can speak with the current rotation supervisor to identify an aspect of the rotation that the mentee needs training on; that aspect can then be used as the topic for the mentee presentation to help both get the mentee comfortable with public speaking and to promote active learning within the current rotation, examples of presentation topics could include LibGuide tips, database trainings, library instruction current trends, etc.

Mentors and Mentees should meet on a regular basis agreed upon by both. Initially they should meet at least once a month until such time that they mutually determine they should meet more or less frequently.

It is up to the mentee to contact the mentor about both regularly scheduled and unscheduled meetings. Contact may include emails, face to face conversations, telephone calls, or chats.

Mentors and mentees should decide what form of contact works best for both of them.

Surveys of both the mentor and mentee (separately) or scheduled meetings with Gerald or Kathy B should be conducted to discuss the progress of the mentorship. Meetings/surveys should be conducted at the beginning of the relationship (one or two months in), and then again after six months, one year, and one and a half years to continentally check on the relationship to ensure that it is working for both the mentor and mentee. Then the mentor and mentee should again be surveyed/met with at the end of the relationship to get an overview of how it went and get any tips or suggestions that may help to improve the mentorship program for future residents. Even finding out that everything went well is valuable information that indicates the mentoring program is working properly.