The IGI runs a free, voluntary mentorship scheme for members. Research shows that mentoring helps both mentees and mentors – both groups have higher salaries, climb their career ladders faster and are more satisfied with their careers overall. More specifically, IGI members stand to benefit from a Mentorship Scheme in order to prepare for chartership, develop Personal Career Plans within the IGI CPD framework and to manage career changes which many of us experience as geoscience professionals.
The IGI has produced guidelines which have been developed to establish some ground rules, boundaries and useful tips to try and give mentoring relationships their best chances of providing successful outcomes for all parties.
Participating in the scheme
The IGI holds a list of mentors, which will be provided by email to prospective mentees on a request basis. To become a mentor, please email info@igi.ie with the following details:
- Name including titles and qualifications
- Your county/region
- Email address
- Year first graduated
- Current occupation
- Your specialism(s) as listed in the IGI members’ listing
To become a mentee please contact info@igi.ie requesting the mentor list. It will be the responsibility of prospective mentees to identify and contact a mentor.
The IGI strongly recommends that you attend a mentoring workshop before entering into a mentorship pairing. The IGI runs mentoring workshops from time to time. To enquire about training, please contact info@igi.ie. Research has shown that if both mentors and mentees have some training in mentoring and coaching skills then the risk of failed relationships is greatly reduced and outcomes are much more successful.
IGI Mentoring Guidelines download
The mentoring relationship
As a mentee you will have guidance of a mentor as a source of knowledge and encouragement in planning your professional journey. As a mentor you will help mentees greatly enhance their career potential. Technical knowledge transfer is a small and relatively unimportant aspect of mentoring. The mentor’s role is to facilitate the mentee’s thinking and to support self-development.
Mentoring relationships commonly operate a structure which begins with an initial scoping session without commitment. Given agreement, a short series of mentoring sessions, each one of pre-determined length follows. The series is finalised with a review. It may or may not be followed by agreement to another series of sessions and so on.
Slides from Webinar entitled “How to be an Effective Geoscience Mentor”, hosted by IGI and John and Trudy Arthurs on 1st March 2023
Download slides here – pdf
Continuing Professional Development
There is no formal reporting requirement for the Mentorship Scheme, however, participation in scheme will be eligible for a maximum of 10 hours CPD per annum. These hours are to be recorded in the CPD worksheet in the ‘Participation’ section for mentors (max. 5 hours) and in the ‘Informal activity’ section for mentees (max. 5 hours).
