How student matches happen
A key part of the Springboard experience is building a strong mentor-mentee relationship. Before the start of every new cohort, our Student Advising team takes a look at our students' interests, goals, geographies, and time availability and works to align it as closely as possible with available mentors. Depending on your capacity, we may match you at any time with new students from upcoming cohorts or when students have been unmatched.
- Please be sure to fill out your mentor profile thoroughly and always keep your capacity and availability up-to-date to help us with the matching process. You can do so from the "Availability" tab in your profile.
Note that updating your capacity and availability does not guarantee you are matched with more students. That being said, we'll do our best to match you with new students. Our system is prioritizing mentors who haven't had student matches in a while and mentors who currently don't have any active students. Feel free to reach out to the team to request new pairings if you haven't received a new student in several months.
Updating your Max Capacity
Terminology:
- Preferred Capacity: The number of students a mentor wants per course family
- Active mentees: the number of students the mentor is currently matched with per course family
- Max capacity: The maximum number of students a mentor can have across course families. This number has to be approved by Springboard.
For example, if your max capacity across course families is 6 and your preferred capacity for the Data Analytics Family is set to 3:
- If you are assigned to 2 students, you can be matched with a 3rd student in that course family at any time.
- If you are assigned to 3 students, you reach your preferred capacity in this course family and may increase it up to your max capacity of 6.
- If you reach your max capacity, you will not be able to increase your preferred capacity or/and be matched with more students in any course families without requesting a capacity increase that may (or may not) get approved by Springboard.
Guidelines to update your max capacity:
- Currently, the maximum capacity limit is 6 with additional capacity only being granted for those who have received a formal mentor review from the team.
- For increasing capacity beyond 6 students, we typically consider increases after at least 3 months of mentoring so that we can see the mentoring impact on your students. Then, you can request a capacity increase of up to 15 which will be sent to the team for review. You will receive an email approving or denying your request in the next 2 business days.
- When increasing capacity from 0, the same approval review by the team is implemented.
- If you cannot take more students (due to a planned vacation or a change in bandwidth), simply update your capacity to 0. When set to 0, we will not match you with any new mentees. This doesn't impact your current active students.
Updating your Availability
In addition to your capacity, you should make sure your availability is up-to-date by dragging and dropping your availability slots. To remove an availability slot, click the "x". You can also set your timezone when needed.
- Note: Please have at least 1 hour of availability per student you want to mentor to ensure successful matches.
- For example: If you have a max capacity of 4 students, please have 4 hours of availability. You cannot book an availability slot where a student call is scheduled (indicated in gray).
Filling your Skills
Ensuring you select a minimum of 3 skills in each course family you are mentoring in. We are sharing a video on how to successfully update your skills below: