If you’re proud to be an engineer and want to give something back to your profession, you could consider becoming an Independent Mentor Service (IMS) mentor.
We need engineers like you to get involved, pass on your experience and share valuable knowledge and experiences with mentees. Under the scheme, you’ll support and encourage mentees, asking them challenging questions so that they find their own solutions and support them in reaching their objectives.
Mentoring provides you with an excellent opportunity to further your own continuing professional development (CPD), meet new engineers and develop connections in new areas.
We match you with a mentee by industry or proximity, although the service is international and can be managed remotely, so you may be assigned a mentee from outside your home country. In that case, meetings and interactions take place by phone and online.
We offer separate mentoring services through our Accredited schemes, such as the Monitored Professional Development Scheme. MPDS mentors are welcome to volunteer as IMS mentors, but IMS mentoring may not follow the formal reporting structure in MPDS. The IMS isn’t available to mentees within companies which have their own Acredited scheme.
About you
You’ll need to be an engineer, professionally registered and one of our members. It would be ideal if you also had the following qualities and experience:
- Leadership experience
- Professional competence
- A proven commitment to your own and others’ continuing professional development
- A passion for promoting the profession to the next generation
- Emotional intelligence, altruism and the ability to be objective
What you will do
As a mentor, you’ll need to:
- Listen to your mentee
- Support and encourage your mentee
- Ask challenging questions to help your mentee find their own solutions
- Help your mentee learn by sharing their experiences
- Identify sources of information and networking opportunities
- Remain impartial at all times
- Share your own experiences
- Support your mentee, not acting as a line manager, tutor or work reviewer
We anticipate your mentee will be one of two types:
- A developing engineer working towards professional registration, wanting to establish a mentor/mentee relationship either using a formal or informal reporting structure, or
- An experienced engineer who wants to establish a peer-to-peer relationship
The latter works well if you have a particular engineering specialism that you feel would be helpful to others. In this capacity, you can advise mentees, but you’re not expected to act as a technical authority.
How you will benefit
Mentoring provides an opportunity for you to:
- Further your own continuing professional development (CPD)
- Meet new engineers
- Develop connections in new areas
- Learn more about other industry divisions
This can be either remotely or face-to-face and on a timescaele and commitment level agreed with your mentee.
It’s difficult for smaller companies – which is what most motorsport companies are – to have that kind of support structure for personal development and to have access to facilities and materials required for life-long learning.
It just doesn’t exist in motor sport: it’s very much down to the individual to do it themselves, and with the best will in the world, without the support structures, it’s very difficult. The independent mentor service is a very good initiative to put in place the help and support that people need to do that.
Mr Peter Hewson CEng MIMechE
Head of tyres for Caterham F1
How much time it will take
There are no fixed rules governing the amount of time or frequency of your interactions. After you’ve been matched with a mentee, you’ll agree the timescales and commitment levels between you.
Once your mentee has achieved their goal, you can end your mentoring agreement. Otherwise, the arrangement can be ended at any time by agreement between the two of you.
Where you will be
We aim to match mentees and mentors either by industry or location, depending on the mentor and mentee agreement.
However, as this is a globally offered scheme, we believe that mentoring can be successfully managed on a remote basis, therefore mentees may be assigned to mentors from outside of their home country.
How it works
Before being allocated a mentee you’ll need to be approved by our professional review committee.
We’ll then direct you to our online mentor support, which provides access to voluntary online training modules and information.
Our recommended online training modules are:
If you are looking to boost your skills as a mentor in general, you might also be interested in doing our classroom-based course in mentoring skills.
Once we have matched you with a mentee – you can be allocated up to three – you can agree the frequency of meetings and level of interaction between you. You’ll enter voluntarily into the agreement with your mentee – it’s a partnership between you both. Our
memorandum of agreement (MOA) guides you both on how the service works.
There’s no fee for using the service, and unfortunately we are unable to reimburse any expenses associated with mentoring activities. This service is set up purely to help introduce mentors and mentees. It is not mandatory in any way and all parties must abide by our
code of conduct and by-laws when engaging in this activity.