What is Custom Profile Data?
As a part of recruitment efforts, institutions provide participant directory information; however, institutions can also provide additional, custom mentee and mentor attributes referred to as: custom profile data (previously referred to institution provided data). This custom data allows you to view, track, match, and analyze impact for specific segments of participants that are important to your program and institution.
Profile Data In Action
Common Profile Data
- College / Department
- Degree Program / Major
- Assigned Advisor
- Scholarship Recipient Status
- Pell Eligibility Status
- First Gen Status
- Transfer Status
- Membership within a Specific Club / Organization
Potential Use Cases
- Deans only want to see the data for students in their specific College.
- Academic advisors need to be notified of flags for students in their caseload.
- You need to report out on a specific population population for continual grant funding.
All of the above can be easily addressed by including custom profile data!
- The program needs more mentors with a Nursing or Accounting major.
- You decide to invite transfer students as mentees. Are any mentors transfer students?
- Your mentees seem to prefer alumni mentors with more recent graduation dates.
All of the above can be easily addressed by including custom profile data!
The primary reasons you may want to segment your data is to make interpreting and comparing your data much more efficient. What populations does you institution typically target or focus on? What natural segments exist? Review just a few options below:
Transfer students, commuter students, first-generation students, undergraduate students, graduate students, students of color, part-time students, online students, students on academic probation...
All of the above can be easily addressed by including custom profile data!
- You want to promote an upcoming workshop for first-generation students.
- Mentors have reported struggling to answer some international student questions.
- Students mentoring those on academic probation may need additional information.
All of the above can be easily addressed by including custom profile data!
Want more inspiration?
| Institution | Target Outcome | Uploaded Data | Result |
Understand online student engagement |
Student Status (Online - Y/N) |
Verify strong mentorship engagement |
|
Increase efficacy of communication with newly admitted and waitlisted students |
Admit Status (Admit, Waitlist, etc.) |
Message relevant resources and event invitations to the right students | |
Enhance support for newly admitted students |
Test Status (Test-Optional - Y/N) |
Provide additional resources to test-optional mentees |
|
Tailor student support and reporting |
Campus Location Honors Status Military Status, etc. |
Report on mentorship outcomes for relevant segments |
|
Build partnerships with industry / community organizations |
Employer | Tailor outreach to organizations |
|
Identify participants from previous programs |
Returning Participants (Returning - Y/N) |
Send out communications specific to returning status |
Warning: Data Not Appropriate for Custom Profile Data
Custom profile data should remain relatively static throughout the duration of the program and, as often as possible, beyond the program year. Why? In order to avoid adding data that will frequently change and become outdated. In addition, the data will be attached to each individual participant moving forward, including in future participation in any mentorship programs.
| ✅ Yes | ❌ No |
| Birth Year | Age |
| Academic Status / Standing | GPA |
| Graduation Year | Class Year (First-Year, Sophomore, etc.) |
However, that being said, data can never remain totally static. You will have the opportunity to add custom profile data up to six times per program year.
How To: Provide Participant Data
File Preparation
- Email address is required. Your file must include the email address associated with each participant in the Partner Dashboard. Email address serves as the unique identifier used to tag contacts or participants with their custom profile data.
- There is no limit to the number of custom profile fields you can include.
- Create one column per profile field. Name each column header exactly as you want it to appear as a filter in your Partner Dashboard. The Support team will create the filters using the column names exactly as they appear in your file.
- Mentor and mentee data can be combined. Unlike participant contact lists, mentor and mentee custom profile data can be included in the same file.
Sharing the File
Mentor Collective's processes currently supports the following for data sharing:
- Upload via Manage Page | See instructions for providing data files on our Manage Page article
- Email attachment (You are welcome to send zipped with a password, for additional security)
- Secure file share (such as Google Drive or SharePoint)
- SFTP, upon request
Data will be available to view in your Mentor Collective Partner Dashboard within 3 business days of data file delivery.
Tip: It is often easiest to provide Participant Directory Information and Custom Profile Data at the same time, prior to inviting participants.
Ensure Data Consistency
Participant data should be provided with the first row as a header row:
| First Name | Last Name | Phone | School ID | *College | *Transfer Status |
*By default, the label / category identified in your header row will be the name displayed in the Partner Dashboard - please use the exact language you would like to see. However, you can contact your Mentor Collective representative if any label / category needs to be changed at a later time.
Custom profile data should remain consistent. For example, if your program wants to provide Majors as a custom attribute for all participants, Majors should be provided in a consistent format within each data upload, and in future uploads:
| Upload | ✅ Yes | ❌ No |
| 1 | Biology - BS | Biology - BS |
| 2 | Biology - BS | Biology |
| 3 | Biology - BS | BS Biology |
This will allow you to efficiently obtain access to the exact information you are looking for and prevent messy data in the Partner Dashboard.
Custom Profile Data on the Dashboard
Custom profile data can be made available in the following areas of the Partner Dashboard:
- Program Intelligence Chart, in the Population Dropdown
- Participant Page Filters
- Data Exports
- Participants Profile Page
- Mentorship Details Page
- Flag Page
You can work with your Mentor Collective representative to customize which profile data will appear in which Dashboard area(s).
Custom Profile Data for Matching
Custom profile data can be incorporated into our matching algorithm - either as required shared attributes, or appropriately weighed amongst all other attributes.
You can work with your Mentor Collective representative to determine what data you would like incorporated into the matching process.
Benefit of Custom Profile Data
Custom profile data is a great opportunity to add additional mentor and mentee profile data to your Partner Dashboard, beyond Participant Directory Information and matching survey results. It allows you to filter your Partner Dashboard to view program data for specific segments of participants in order to support workflows around accreditation reports, campus wide analysis of institutional effectiveness, and predictive analyses. You can also maximize the effectiveness of your mentorship program and provide meaningful, targeted support to populations of interest or need at your institution.
[Webinar] Leveraging Institution-Provided Data to Strengthen Your Mentorship Initiative
FAQ
❓When should I add Custom Profile Data to my program?
- It is often easiest and most impactful to provide Participant Directory Information and Custom Profile Data at the same time, prior to inviting participants.
- However, if you determine that there is additional data you would like to see in your Partner Dashboard to help you measure impact after your program has launched, it is still possible to add!
❓How does Mentor Collective protect the privacy of this data?
- All Mentor Collective data is stored securely in our cloud database infrastructure. Data at rest is stored using block-level encryption.
❓Is Mentor Collective FERPA compliant?
- Yes. Learn more here!
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