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First in Family mentoring program
- Economics First in Family mentoring program
- What happens next
What happens next
Your application will be assessed, and if you are shortlisted you will be invited to attend an interview (online or in-person). This interview will assess your goals for the program and help us match you with a mentor.
If successful, we will set you up with a suitable mentor based on your career goals, skill development needs and the mentor’s areas of expertise.
We will contact you with the outcome of your application.
You should be clear about what you hope to achieve e.g. seek career advice. Be open to new opportunities and have a willingness to learn from your mentor. Your mentors time and experience are valuable and that there may be occasions when they are not immediately available.
Your responsibilities include:
- being proactive with your mentor – you are the driver of the relationship
- accepting responsibility for your own goals, decisions and actions
- completing agreed tasks and actively participating in program activities
- appreciating the professional and personal commitments of mentors and being flexible with their availability
- maintaining confidentiality (personal and professional). If in doubt, ask them first before sharing
- keeping your appointments with your mentor and providing plenty of notice if arrangements must be postponed or cancelled
- maintaining contact with the school officer throughout the program
- completing journal entries after each meeting and submitting two entries by the outlined deadlines.
The role of the mentor is to inspire you to think about the range of work options available to them during and at the end of your degree. The mentor will share their knowledge and experience to equip their mentee to meet challenges they face in starting and developing their career.
Responsibilities include assisting you to:
- formulate or articulate your career goals, and strategies for achieving them
- understand the professional work environment
- identify some of the keys to starting your career and progression through an organisation
- understand the importance of networks, how to develop them and how they work
- learn through constructive feedback
- maintain confidentiality (professional and personal).
Reflective journals
As part of the program, you need to keep a reflective journal, completed after each visit with your mentor. They aren’t assessed but they are integral to getting the best experience possible from the program. Your journal isn’t just a chance for you to note down key outtakes from your meeting, it also helps build important graduate qualities like critical thinking and thought analysis skills.
What is a reflective journal?
A reflective journal is very personal, so there is no right or wrong way to write your journal. It should be a very honest and personally developing activity. When you write your journal, you may interpret events or experiences differently to others or react differently than others do. That’s okay, it is a personal reflection.
Your entries should be around 600 words in length. The quality comes in what you write not how much.
There are 4 main criteria that a reflective journal entry should contain:
- Situation: what happened?
- Affect: what was its impact on you personally?
- Interpretation: what did you learn from the experience?
- Decision: what did you decide you would do differently should the situation arise again? How would you apply the learnings? What has changed (your thinking, your assumptions, your skills etc.) What are your action items to continue developing in this area?
Last updated: 16 March 2023
