What is a Matching Survey?
Mentors and mentees complete a matching survey when they sign up for the program. These surveys collect information about who they are, what is important to them, and what they are looking for in their mentorship and mentoring counterpart.
Mentor Collective matching surveys serve two key purposes in your program: to identify a well matched mentor who can help each participant meet their goals, and to help you better understand your mentors and mentees.
Matching Survey Prompts
The default questions on the matching survey are based on our research about which criteria are essential to making good matches. This often includes asking about academic interests, life experiences, age, hobbies, and preferences about the mentorship experience (e.g. asking a mentee how frequently they would like to be in contact with their mentor).
Standard matching surveys contain a collection of questions that can be grouped into three categories:
Shared Characteristics
These questions are used to identify mentors and mentees with similar interests and experiences. Sharing certain characteristics can be important to creating engaged relationships and helping participants meet their goals.
Example: “Which of these career fields are you interested in?” ; “How old are you?”
Mentorship Experience
These questions are used to identify mentors and mentees with similar expectations for their mentorship. This is key for mentorship satisfaction.
Example: “Different mentors and mentees prefer different communication frequencies. How often would you like to be in touch with your counterpart?”
Mentorship Guidance
These questions collect stories and conversation starters that are used to start the mentorship off on the right foot. Mentors and mentees can jump right in to building meaningful connections, based on responses to these questions and/or recommended resources to help support the mentorship pair.
Example: “What is one goal you would like your mentor to help with in this mentorship?”
Reviewing Your Program’s Matching Survey
You can review your program’s matching survey on the Mentorships Page of your Partner Dashboard. If you have made any matching survey configurations, those will be included in your matching survey preview in the Partner Dashboard.
In addition, you can also review all standard matching surveys by program design below:
Using Insights from Self-Reported Data
You can review self-reported, matching survey data in aggregate, export it for further analysis, and drill down to specific participant data. More specifically, you might want to:
- Look at conversation log or flag rates, segmented by matching survey responses, in the Program Intelligence Chart. How do self-identified experiences or qualities correlate with engagement?
- Search for any trends in what mentees want in their mentor, in your Mentees’ Top Matching Criterion chart. Does this align with your current matching process? If not, you may want to consider adjusting your matching process.
- Export matching survey data across multiple program years to see how mentee needs have changed over time.
- Identify mentees with a particular characteristic who might benefit from a specific resource, message, or event.
- Struggling with matching all mentees? Identify mentors with a particular characteristic that mentees have requested in the “Top Recruitment Opportunities” chart, and ask those mentors if they can support another mentee.
Learn more ideas from Mentor Collectvive's Partner Dashboard Webinar:
FAQ
❓I would like to make changes to my program’s matching survey. Is that possible?
❓Do returning participants have to complete the matching survey again?
- If you are using the same matching survey from your previous program, then returning mentors will not be required to take the matching survey again.
❓Can participants edit their matching survey responses?
- No, participants cannot edit their responses. However, they can complete the matching survey again on their Participant Dashboard.
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