Forbes Technology Council quotes Dr Morey in article "Six Ways You Can Help Young Tech Talent Connect With Industry Mentors"

Six Ways You Can Help Young Tech Talent Connect With Industry Mentors 

The members of Forbes Technology Council know how beneficial a mentor can be, especially in the fast-paced, ever-changing tech industry. As a business leader, you should help your younger employees find and build relationships with mentors—both within and outside of your company—people who can help the younger employees grow and improve. Here are six approaches they recommend:

1. Commit To A Weekly Schedule

Successful mentoring is an extremely critical factor to the development of a young employee's skills and is an enabler for success. Committing weekly time on their schedules and the schedules of their mentors ensures regular knowledge sharing and growth. Such structured mentoring can be addressed in person or remote, but it needs to be planned for, consistent and provide exposure to a broad set of skills that relates to the employee's career desires. - Donald Schlising, Landmark Services Cooperative

2. Allow Employees To Explore Outside Their Divisions

Allowing dedicated time for exploration and creativity is crucial for early employee development. We must allow them to explore outside of their respective divisions to allow for diverse cross-pollination of ideas and skills development. Often times an employee is hired on very basic information to fit a need, but that leads to undervaluing the 360 degrees of what that employee brings to the table. Allowing them to explore other areas of the enterprise to pick out their own mentors in fields they find stimulating is important and is an effective way to finding true mentor-mentee connectivity. - Jose Morey, Liberty BioSecurity

3. Provide Opportunities Outside Of Work

My preferred method is to take advantage of both internal and external mentors. Often times, it's easier to provide opportunities outside of work to help younger employees develop relationships with mentors who are not caught up in the same day-to-day situations, but can provide more objective advice, guidance and longer-term perspectives on their careers. - Monty Hamilton, Rural Sourcing

4. Directly Ask Experienced Professionals To Mentor

People who have had success in their careers know how important their own mentors were to their success. More often than not they're willing to mentor younger people. You'd be surprised by how effective directly asking people in the space can work. - Advait Shinde, GoGuardian

5. Practice Reverse Internships

Reverse internships are a slightly different way to view internships. Traditionally, an internship is usually when a junior engineer tries to perform some "not-so-involved" task to help senior mentors. In a reverse internship, mentors find projects young employees would like to do and work with them on their projects. This empowers the junior engineers and builds trust to begin with. Once a working equation is built, the junior employees are more forthcoming with sharing ideas and execution strategies with senior members. - Faraz Shaikh, Cisco/Springpath

6. Help Young Employees Understand What They Need In A Mentor

Mentorship is not about what you get, it's about what you give. Help young employees go through the thought process around what they want from their careers and get a lot more specific around the value exchange with a mentor before coaching them on techniques to recruit a dream mentor. Many young employees do not yet have the tools and mindset to frame the value exchange with a mentor and, as such, are disappointed both with response rates as well as fit of a mentor, because they did not frame their needs well enough. - Sheldon Monteiro, Publicis Sapient