One of the most important steps before implementing the mentoring sessions is the “matching” between the mentors and mentees in each project country, in order to establish the human relationship that we consider vital for the success of the project. The project partners will have to proceed with the matching taking into account two options based on their preference in their project countries. They can either implement the matching process via an (1) online questionnaire, or (2) a matching event. More detailed information is provided below:
Matching Pairs through an Online Questionnaire
As a first option, mentors and mentees have the opportunity to complete an online questionnaire, which will assist the consortium of the project and the mentors to match the most compatible participants, based on their interests. Information about the mentors’ background is available and shared among the mentees in order to review their experience and career background and draw their pairing preference within the online questionnaire. Then, the project partnership in cooperation with the mentors’ review mentees’ input and conclude with the matched pairs.
Matching Events
As a second option, the matching is organized through open events, which include prospective mentors, as well as the interested women who want to become e-entrepreneurs and existing women entrepreneurs (mentees) who want to re-enter the business market by starting or running their business online. Prior to the matching event to each project country, the prospective mentors are already identified by each partner organisation, in order to be aware of the business sector they are involved in. In order to make the matching event more interactive, the project partners in each project country take advantage of the mirroring technique and proceed to two phases:
Prior to the event:
- Ask mentors to give you 4 or 5 questions that they would like to be replied to by the mentees during the matching event;
- Send the questions to mentees prior to the event so that they can analyse them based on their experiences and interests;
During the event:
- At the beginning of the matching event, distribute to the participants paper nametags with icons based on their existing and future field of business (i.e., computer icon for digital marketing, food icon for e-food, etc.). Inform mentors and mentees that the icon of their nametags indicates other people in the room that work in the same field;
- When the paper nametags with icons are distributed to both the mentors and the mentees, encourage them to talk to people with the same icon of nametags and give them the opportunity to share their replies to the previous questions. This helps to assess common goals and objectives, share the significance of the mentoring relationship, and draw up a common contact point in order to promote a strong mentoring relationship between the two sides.
Furthermore, in order to achieve a correlation in professional roles and other personal attributes, there are some more suggestions for matching based on the following factors:
- Complexity and size of e-businesses;
- Type of entrepreneurial experience/work history;
- Development needs and interests;
- Age gap;
- Gender;
- Geographical proximity;
- Educational background
- Other personal characteristics.
