Frequently Asked Questions

Men­tor­ing, very broad­ly, is a trust­ing rela­tion­ship between two or more peo­ple. Men­tor­ing con­sists of a men­tor and a mentee. The men­tor and the mentee typ­i­cal­ly dif­fer in respect to expe­ri­ences, knowl­edge, and skills. The men­tor facilitates—together with oth­er resources—the devel­op­ment of the mentee through dis­cus­sions, input, tasks, role mod­el­ing, shar­ing of per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al knowl­edge, and col­lab­o­ra­tion. Men­tor­ing can assume many forms, can be done in mul­ti­ple con­stel­la­tions (e.g., with more than one mentee), and can have very dif­fer­ent goals. For Glob­al Tal­ent Men­tor­ing, the over­ar­ch­ing goal of men­tor­ing is devel­op­ing young tal­ents to excel­lence. To achieve this goal, Glob­al Tal­ent Men­tor­ing com­bines one-on-one men­tor­ing rela­tion­ships with (inter­dis­ci­pli­nary) col­lab­o­ra­tive projects, the devel­op­ment of indi­vid­ual learn­ing path­ways, and net­work­ing in both small groups and the entire Glob­al Tal­ent Men­tor­ing community.

A mentee at Glob­al Tal­ent Men­tor­ing is a stu­dent eager and moti­vat­ed to devel­op their tal­ent in a STEMM field. Typ­i­cal­ly, a mentee is younger and less expe­ri­enced than their men­tor. At Glob­al Tal­ent Men­tor­ing, mentees start at about 16 years old and stay in the pro­gram for rough­ly ten years.

A men­tor is a per­son who shares their knowl­edge and expe­ri­ences with a less expe­ri­enced and less knowl­edge­able per­son (i.e., a mentee). At Glob­al Tal­ent Men­tor­ing, men­tors are emi­nent researchers and prac­ti­tion­ers in the field of STEMM with a proven track record of excel­lence in their field. They vol­un­teer to sup­port the devel­op­ment of out­stand­ing young tal­ents, the mentees of Glob­al Tal­ent Mentoring.

STEMM stands for Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy, Engi­neer­ing, Math­e­mat­ics, and Med­ical Sci­ences. This abbre­vi­a­tion describes the scope of the domains that Glob­al Tal­ent Men­tor­ing supports.

We are hap­py that you are inter­est­ed in becom­ing a men­tor vol­un­teer! To learn about becom­ing a men­tor, please vis­it our page about men­tors. There, you’ll find detailed infor­ma­tion, the pre­req­ui­sites to becom­ing a men­tor, and the Men­tor Vol­un­teer Form.

The process of becom­ing a mentee at Glob­al Tal­ent Men­tor­ing com­pris­es sev­er­al steps. First, stu­dents of about 15 years must be nom­i­nat­ed by a part­ner of Glob­al Tal­ent Men­tor­ing. In the sec­ond step, these nom­i­nat­ed stu­dents are invit­ed to com­plete a detailed and com­pre­hen­sive appli­ca­tion. Based on that, the selec­tion com­mit­tee will decide who best fits the mentee pro­file and who is eli­gi­ble to par­tic­i­pate as a mentee.

To start the process of becom­ing a mentee at Glob­al Tal­ent Men­tor­ing you can look at our Part­ner Direc­to­ry for a part­ner in your area. If there is not a part­ner in your region, please con­tact us direct­ly and we will pro­vide you with infor­ma­tion on how to proceed.

No, par­tic­i­pa­tion in Glob­al Tal­ent Men­tor­ing is com­plete­ly free of charge for every­one. Thanks to the gen­er­ous fund­ing by the Ham­dan Foun­da­tion and the vol­un­teer ser­vice of our men­tors, Glob­al Tal­ent Men­tor­ing does not charge for participation.

Men­tor­ing at Glob­al Tal­ent Men­tor­ing starts in ear­ly 2021. For mentees, the nom­i­na­tion, appli­ca­tion, and selec­tion process begin in the spring of the pre­vi­ous year. Men­tors are wel­come at any time!

In accor­dance with its goal to sup­port the devel­op­ment of excel­lence, Glob­al Tal­ent Men­tor­ing is a long-term pro­gram. Mentees start at about 16 years old and should remain an active par­tic­i­pant in Glob­al Tal­ent Men­tor­ing until they fin­ish their doc­tor­al dis­ser­ta­tion or achieve a sim­i­lar lev­el of exper­tise in their field. All par­tic­i­pants com­mit to long-term involve­ment. At least once a year, each par­tic­i­pant reviews their devel­op­ment and has the chance to adapt the process or to leave the program.
Men­tors are wel­come to vol­un­teer as long as they would like. They are asked to com­mit to at least one year at a time.

To par­tic­i­pate in Glob­al Tal­ent Men­tor­ing, all you need is a reli­able inter­net con­nec­tion and a mod­ern brows­er. To use the platform’s video con­fer­enc­ing, a cam­era, micro­phone and head­set or loud­speak­er are nec­es­sary. The men­tor­ing plat­form can also be used on any mobile device.

Glob­al Tal­ent Men­tor­ing is an inter­na­tion­al pro­gram. For that rea­son, Eng­lish is the only lan­guage for com­mu­ni­ca­tion on Glob­al Tal­ent Men­tor­ing. To ensure that every­body is able to com­mu­ni­cate in Eng­lish, we check the Eng­lish pro­fi­cien­cy for mentees and men­tors before they can participate.

Mentees and men­tors are matched in a care­ful, thor­ough process that is large­ly based on mutu­al STEMM inter­ests and research inter­ests, with addi­tion­al con­sid­er­a­tion for time zone and oth­er cri­te­ria. Glob­al Tal­ent Men­tor­ing also aims to match par­tic­i­pants who share the same gender.

One cri­te­ri­on for the match­ing of mentees and men­tors is a suf­fi­cient over­lap in wak­ing hours of the participants.