How to Mentor Your Student Workers

By Francine Fluetsch on May 12, 2017

When you hire a student worker, either while they are still finishing up their Bachelor’s or right after they graduate, you may be hiring someone who has never had a job before, or at least, someone who doesn’t have a lot of experience in the job world. They will be young and wide-eyed, excited to start but extremely nervous at the same time. They will be watching you and their fellow coworkers to observe what the norm is in your work environment and will try and fit in as best they can.

To help them ease into the process of figuring out the workplace, why not take them under your wing and mentor them a little bit? They will greatly appreciate the guidance, and you’ll have a better worker on your hands since, after some tips and suggestions, they’ll feel more confident at their jobs and therefore produce better work.

pexels.com

So how exactly can you be a mentor to your student workers without babying them too much to the point where they never take initiative by themselves?

Give them the lay of the land

All jobs are going to be different from one another, even if they are in the same field, so a great way to mentor your student workers and to help them feel more comfortable would be to give them the lay of the land, both when it comes to your office life as well as dealing with your particular clientele.

This can come in simple forms like demonstrating how to draft an email to a higher up in the company versus drafting an email to a client. Student workers may be embarrassed to ask you about something small and “obvious,” like an email, so if you take initiative and show them the little things, they will be very grateful for it.

This will help them understand the dynamics of the workplace and how they should act, both towards those they are working with and working for.

For example, I work at a tutoring center where our clients are technically the students, but we also have to deal with the parents of said students. My boss helped me navigate how to serve the students effectively while still keeping the parents in the loop and checking on their needs and desires for their child’s educational path at our center. If I hadn’t seen email examples as well as in-person interactions with parents and students from my boss, I would have been very overwhelmed trying to figure out the balancing act and keeping both of our client groups happy. You’d be surprised how helpful the little details are, and the more you can lay out in a constructive way, the better.

Be there for questions

Once you’ve eased them into the work environment at your work, allow them to get some hands-on experience and see things firsthand, but always encourage them to come to you should they have any questions. A great way to show this as being a normal and healthy thing to do in the work environment would be for you to also go to them with questions at times. This will build a trusting relationship that shows them you aren’t just their recruiter, but are indeed their mentor in this environment, and that coming to you with questions will only help them, not make them look like they don’t know what they are doing.

What kind of question could you go to them with? Well, maybe you just drafted an email to a client and want their opinion on it, either on the wording, the context, or a bit of both. You send it over, ask them to read it, and then give you feedback on whether or not they think it will work for the client.

Little exercises like this are great ways to give the student some confidence and a little bit of power, and also will help you gauge whether or not they are are grasping the concepts of how things run in your workplace.

Hold conferences/check-ins with them

Usually, being evaluated can be daunting for any employee, but especially for student workers who haven’t been through the process before. While formal evaluations are of course necessary, why not also have an informal conference/check in with your student workers every month or so? Here you will be able to discuss with them what they are excelling at, what might need some tweaking or improvement and how they can go about this, and you can also invite them to discuss any qualms or successes they’ve had and seen in themselves and their work and get a discussion going.

This shows them that you care by actually taking the time to informally check in with them, will help them feel more confident in themselves because they will know what they are doing well, and will make them feel better about things that have been more challenging since they will see that you are willing to help them work on it.

Being a mentor is in the little things. If you can show your student workers that they can trust you and that you truly care about them succeeding, you’ll have some motivated workers on your hands who will really appreciate all that you do for them.

Follow Uloop

Apply to Write for Uloop News

Join the Uloop News Team

Discuss This Article

Get Student Housing News Monthly

Back to Top

Log In

Contact Us

Upload An Image

Please select an image to upload
Note: must be in .png, .gif or .jpg format
OR
Provide URL where image can be downloaded
Note: must be in .png, .gif or .jpg format

By clicking this button,
you agree to the terms of use

By clicking "Create Alert" I agree to the Uloop Terms of Use.

Image not available.

Add a Photo

Please select a photo to upload
Note: must be in .png, .gif or .jpg format