Hiring and investing in early-career professionals is a key part of any holistic talent strategy. But developing early talent goes beyond just providing them with a role in your organization.

The best early talent programs nurture employees and help prepare them for the next phase of their careers. And one of the best ways to do that? Early career mentorship.

What’s the impact of mentorship on early talent? And why is it so important? Keep reading as we break down the details and share some tips to help you create an early career mentorship program that really works.

Why is mentorship important in early career? 

From entry-level employees to experienced leaders, mentorship is valuable for individuals at all stages of their careers. But when it comes to new professionals, the perks of having a mentor can be magnified, both for themselves and you, as their employer.

First, early-career employees often have larger professional skills gaps. This is to be expected as they step into a brand new phase of their life. Mentorship can help bridge that gap and make the transition into the workplace a bit easier.

But equally—if not more important—is the value of getting employees mentoring support sooner rather than later.

Think about early career mentorship like financial investments. Of course, you can start saving and reap the benefits of investing at any time. But if you start sooner, you’ll not only have a longer period of time to build up your savings–you’ll also benefit from exponential growth over time. 

The same concept applies to early career mentorship. Providing up-and-coming talent with mentorship opportunities as they enter the workforce means they can enjoy the benefits of mentorship for longer and accelerate their long-term development. This can impact everything from salary growth to job promotions throughout their careers.

Key benefits of early mentorship for businesses

Investing in early talent can have a significant impact on your organization’s bottom line. 

Early talent mentorship:

• Boosts employee retention. Employees participating in mentorship programs are 49% less likely to leave. When employees are retained from the very beginning, it helps organizations maintain institutional knowledge and build loyalty.

• Attracts top early talent. Mentorship is important to employees. So much so, that 65% of early talent would leave their existing company for one with more mentoring opportunities. This means that early talent mentorship can give your talent acquisition strategy a competitive edge.

• Promotes employee growth. Employees with mentors are 5x more likely to be promoted. Instead of waiting to help employees develop their skills and experience, start thinking about employee growth from day one so you can fill your internal talent pipeline. 

The role of mentors in early career development 

Mentors are typically experienced leaders who can help guide new and junior employees through the early stages of their careers. They’re committed to supporting, challenging, and celebrating their early-talent mentees, so everyone can make the most of their mentoring experience.

How do they do this? Let’s have a look.

Mentors nurture skills development

Early talent is typically made up of students or individuals who have just completed some form of education. While they’ve likely learned the basics, we know that education doesn’t equate to hands-on experience. So, a key part of early career development is helping employees develop the skills they need to succeed in their roles. 

Sure, you can invest in training to help early-career employees build their skill sets. But it’s not the only way, or even the best way,to boost employee performance.

The 70-20-10 learning model shows that only 10% of our learning comes from traditional training and education. The rest comes from on-the-job learning (70%) or exposure (20%). Mentors can either create opportunities for hands-on learning or even expose new talent to learning opportunities.

And if you think about it, mentors have gone through their own skills development experience to become experts in their fields. They’ve learned the tips and tricks to becoming more effective and efficient in their jobs and professional development.

Mentoring gives these senior employees the chance to pass down these learnings, instead of leaving early talent to spend time figuring it all out for themselves.

Mentors support employee career development 

Building new skills is always an asset to an employee’s career development. But how do they know what skills they actually need for future roles?

Well, they often don’t.

With potential career paths looking more complicated than ever before, it can be challenging for junior employees to untangle the possibilities alone. Entry-level employees often have very little understanding of what paths are available to them.

Mentors are a great tool for providing career guidance and connecting the professional dots. Mentors can help junior employees identify career goals and help them create a roadmap to get there. And in many cases, mentors can evolve into sponsors and even open the doors for them.

Without mentors, employees can often be left feeling like there aren’t any opportunities to grow within your organization. This causes employees to disengage or ultimately seek new opportunities elsewhere.

Mentors elevate underrepresented talent

Mentoring is key to creating equitable opportunities for underrepresented employees. 

In practice, the vast majority (71%) of executives who mentor, choose to mentor employees who are of the same gender or race. And when the majority of senior executives are white males, it’s easy to see why diverse talent ends up behind the eight ball.

It’s not that they’re intentionally choosing to disregard diverse talent. It’s just that affinity bias is a deep-rooted challenge that individuals and organizations often face.

Intentionally unbiased mentorship programs can help by ensuring that diverse and underrepresented talent have access to the same mentoring opportunities as their peers. When mentors are paired with diverse talent, it starts to level the playing field. They not only provide growth opportunities and professional support but mentors can help expand the visibility of mentees and boost their employee networks.

Mentors increase the visibility of early-career employees

Despite the common tropes of interns fetching coffee and twiddling their thumbs, early talent actually wants to feel like they’re making an impact. But in large organizations, it can be really easy for employees to feel lost in a sea of other employees.

“When we look especially at early talent, as you're joining an organization, you want to find opportunities to connect with peers, with leaders, and really shine within an organization.” - Denise Pereira, Head of Customer Success Strategy, 10KC

Mentors can help early-career employees feel seen and valued.

Not only can mentors help celebrate and showcase the skills of their mentees. They can also bring up their names when they’re not in the room. This opens the door to opportunities that may otherwise not be available to them. It also allows them to connect and be recognized by other departments or higher-level employees which would be nearly impossible without a mentor.

And of course, when mentors increase the visibility of their mentees it helps expand their valuable networks.

Mentors build up employee networks

The earlier employees start building their networks, the larger and more beneficial they become. 

Networks can impact everything from job performance to job satisfaction. But 40% of individuals tend to find it very difficult. As early talent adapt to the norms of the professional world, it’s understandable why they find it particularly challenging to connect and build relationships with their peers. 

Providing early talent with one or more mentors is the first step toward expanding their networks. From there, mentors can then continue to build those networks by introducing mentees to other colleagues and leaders within the organization

Anywhere from half to 80% of jobs are filled through networking. While there’s certainly a discussion to be had about how inclusive and equitable this practice is, it’s the reality, which means an employee’s network can significantly impact the future of their careers. 

A great example of this is IBM. They implemented an early career mentorship program for their interns using 10KC. Not only did almost every participant (99%) say that they’d recommend the program to their peers, but 76% said that they made a new connection that helped them professionally.

The role of mentors in leadership development 

Mentors play two very important roles when it comes to early talent:

1. They’re setting mentees up for professional success
2. They’re helping your organization create a pipeline of future leaders.

Talent teams often only look at filling open roles in the immediate future. But what will your company look like 3,5, or 10 years down the road? What skills will you need? How will you fill those roles?

Effective succession planning looks beyond who will step into a leadership role next. It’s helping early talent build the skills, networks, and experience they need to support your organization in the future. Yet, only 5% of organizations develop leaders at all levels.

So where do mentors come in?

Well, if you think about it, every leader was once an early-career employee. And most—if not all—of those leaders will say that they had mentors (formal or informal) that helped get them to where they are today. 

When leaders mentor junior employees and early talent, they provide a perspective on the path to leadership that can otherwise be difficult to replicate. And of course, mentors and sponsors can also create stretch opportunities to challenge employees and get them to advance faster. 

How to create a mentorship and development program for early talent 

High-impact early talent mentorship and development programs aren’t just casually thrown together. They take resources and require strategic planning to ensure that they’re not only effective but inclusive.  

Here are a few steps you can use to create an early career program for your organization.

1. Determine your goals: Setting goals helps keep your early talent mentorship program focused, so you’re making the most of your resources.

2. Decide on a curriculum: By tailoring your mentorship program to your unique objectives, you’re much more likely to reach the goals you’ve set for your organization.

3. Decide who qualifies as early talent: While the definition of early talent is generally pretty consistent, every organization has a slightly different hierarchy which can impact who you select for your early talent programs.

4. Onboard tools and mentoring software: The right tools can help you deploy and scale your early talent program to reduce lift and maximize impact.

5. Measure KPIs and metrics: Having data-driven metrics around your progress is key to keeping stakeholders informed and keeping your program on track.

6. Collect employee feedback: Numbers only tell one side of the story. Asking early talent directly about their mentoring experiences can help you understand what you’re doing well and where you can improve.

7. Optimize your program: Early talent mentoring programs shouldn’t be one-and-done. As your program progresses, take the time to incorporate the feedback and insights. And build those insights into future programs as well.

How 10KC facilitates early talent mentorship programs

Mentorship is key to engaging, developing, and retaining early talent. But you don’t need to build a program from scratch. 10KC is an all-in-one employee mentoring and networking platform that helps organizations make a meaningful impact with mentoring.

“10KC helped us take the manual work out of our networking program and make sure every new intern or co-op will get the virtual networking, learning and informal mentoring opportunities that make EY such a great place to work. We are able to understand exactly what each participant is looking for in their conversations and make valuable connections for each of our incoming interns and co-op hires.” -Jordan Barrett, National Campus Recruiting Leader, EY

Here’s how 10KC can help you create a world-class early career mentorship program that attracts and retains top talent.

• Create a custom curriculum that works. Mentorship doesn’t—and shouldn’t—have to be a free-for-all. Choose from a selection of pre-built, off-the-shelf guided mentorship programs that have been proven to support early talent. Complete with pre-set meeting cadences and discussion guides, 10KCs development programs are designed to keep the career development conversations flowing. Have more specific goals? 10KC can help you create a development program tailored to the needs of your organization and your employees.

• Build networks with meaningful mentorship matches. 10KC’s Smart-match Algorithm helps organizations make unbiased matches at scale. Skip the spreadsheets and automatically match early talent with mentors based on their shared goals, interests, and differences in just a few clicks.

• Give early talent access to busy leaders: Early talent mentorship doesn’t have to exclusively be 1:1. 10KC helps facilitate group-guided mentoring programs and Office Hours to promote knowledge sharing and increase the visibility of early talent among executives.

• Keep participation high by integrating mentorship with the tools you use every day: Mentors and mentees are busy, as are program managers. Instead of adding yet another app to your tech stack, create and deploy your early talent mentoring program right within your existing HRIS and communication tools.

• Make the most out of mentoring: Take the guesswork out of mentoring outcomes. 10KC’s data dashboards help you measure the value of your program in real time. Track everything from program engagement to employee sentiment, so you can tie every interaction back to your employee development goals.