Mentoring Programme: Speed Up Your Career with Alumni

What does mentoring mean in Haaga-Helia?

A mentoring programme is a development process between the mentee/actor (student) and the mentor (alum). Mentoring is learning together, sharing experiences and knowledge through interaction. The aim is to support the student's professional growth, graduation and integration into the world of work. The individual objectives of the mentoring programme are based on the personal needs of the person being mentored.

The mentoring programme consists of 1 Teams orientation for mentors, (at least) 4 one-to-one mentoring meetings between the mentor and the mentee, as well as 3 joint group meetings during the semester. The one-to-one meeting topics be related for example to career planning, finding a traineeship or a job, change of industry, end-of-study challenges, hopes of finding a job abroad, self-development or deepening expertise. The group meetings are used to meet the mentoring pairs, discuss the objectives and ground rules of mentoring, draw up a mentoring agreement, share experiences of the mentoring process and develop interpersonal skills.

We usually use one-to-one mentoring, sometimes group or peer mentoring.

What does the programme offer for a mentor?

For the mentor, the programme provides an opportunity to develop social and interpersonal skills, develop networks, get personal satisfaction in coaching and helping others, receive information about the students' expectations and get reflection and constructive feedback.

If you want to share your knowledge and support students at their personal and professional development – participate in the mentoring programme. You will act as a coach and you have a possibility to encourage students at their studies towards graduation and moving to the business culture.

You should have time for the student and give the opportunity to dialogue. The mentor can be critical at their opinions, but at the same time constructive. It is important that a student thinks on their own and have their own ideas.

By participating in the mentoring programme, you will gain new experiences, contacts, knowledge about mentoring, and a certificate if you wish. During the mentoring process, you have the opportunity to enjoy the discussions of your field with the future colleague.

Mentoring programme can give you:

• fresh ideas
• new motivation for the everyday work
• interesting conversations
• information about student life/studying
• working life connections

In practice

Every spring and autumn, two mentoring programmes start: one in Finnish and one in English. This makes a total of four mentoring programmes during the year. If you register as a mentor in the volunteer register, you will receive in the autumn and spring the profiles of the students who wish to be mentored: the wishes for mentor's educational background, the field they wished their mentor would work in at the moment, and the goals of the student for the mentoring process. You will be able to see what the students want, and if the expectations match, you can sign up as a potential mentor for the certain student(s) in question. If the wishes will not match, we don't expect anything. You'll get another list of students after 6 months. Matching pairs is done as quickly as possible, usually in December/January and in June/August. 

And note - even if you live abroad, you can become a mentor in our programme! Sometimes our students dream of moving abroad to work and in that case a mentor living abroad is better than good. We've had mentors from London, Amsterdam, Dubai, Tokyo and so on...

Mentoring is an important part of Haaga-Helia's alumni activities and is based on a voluntary basis. At Haaga-Helia, mentoring is free of charge for Haaga-Helia students, and alumni act as mentors without any additional compensation. This is a valuable voluntary activity.

Timetable during spring 2026

Finnish-language group meetings: Tuesdays January 20, March 10, and April 28, 4:30–6:30 p.m. at Pasila campus in Helsinki. Mentors' orientation on January 27, on Teams, 3–4 p.m.

English-language group meetings: Wednesdays, January 28, March 18, and May 6, from 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. at Pasila campus in Helsinki. Mentors' orientation on February 4, on Teams from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m.

If you would like to become a mentor, please send an email to [email protected].