CREATING CAREER SUCCESS THROUGH EFFECTIVE MENTORING RELATIONSHIPS 1

Creating Career Success Through Effective Mentoring Relationships

Patricia E. Carley

Bridgewater State University

CREATING CAREER SUCCESS THROUGH EFFECTIVE MENTORING RELATIONSHIPS 2

Abstract

Numerous studies on mentoring programs have been conducted over the past several years,

covering diverse business and academic domains with a variety of mentor/mentee partnerships,

e.g., peer to peer, alumni to student, teacher to student, manager to trainees, etc. Researchers

findings consistently report that mentoring relationships add significant value and provide

positive outcomes for mentees, allowing them to achieve short-term goals. While the outcomes

reported through these studies seem to be consistent, the factors that contribute to the positive

outcomes seem to vary widely. The purpose of this study is to identify the factors and/or

characteristics of mentoring relationships in mentoring programs that are most significant to

creating positive outcomes. We will conduct a longitudinal study to examine the long-term

benefits of mentoring to mentees careers and identify if there is a correlation between positive,

productive mentoring relationships and mentees later career success. For this study, we

randomly selected a group of 25 mentor/mentee pairs from a group of volunteers that participate

in Bridgewater State Universitys School of Management mentoring program. By conducting a

series of surveys, pre- and post- the Universitys 2015-2016 mentoring program, we will

examine to what extent gender, socioeconomic status, identity likeness, mentor experience, and

meeting quantity and quality affect the mentees satisfaction with the program and ultimately,

their satisfaction with later career success.

Keywords: career success, mentor, mentee, business school students

CREATING CAREER SUCCESS THROUGH EFFECTIVE MENTORING RELATIONSHIPS 3

Creating Career Success Through Effective Mentoring Relationships

Mentoring has been defined as a more senior, knowledgeable and experienced

professional supporting, guiding and sometimes assisting a more junior person to be successful

in their personal and/or professional development (Blickle, Schneider, Meurs & Perrewe 2010;

Douglass, Smith, D.L., & Smith, L. J. 2013; Gannon, & Maher 2012).

Mentor, Role Model or Advisor

Bean, Lucas, and Hyers (2014) and Arenofsky (1998) looked at what differentiates a

mentor from a role model or an advisor, and provided their observations on the value of each

role. For example, Arenofsky suggested that while the role model is helpful to individuals for

providing inspiration and one that a person will try to model themselves after, the mentor is

considered, according to true definition, a wise and trusted counselor and teacher (p.1).

Arenofsky pointed out that while a role model may have significant achievements to admire,

they might have significant character flaw(s) that may not make them an ideal mentor.

In the study by Bean et al. (2014), where they examined faculty-to-faculty mentoring at

Westchester University, they found that the relationship was of central importance to both the

mentor and mentee participants. While a role model can be inspirational, there is no interaction

or focused relationship. De Janasz, Ensher and Heun (2008) looked at the value of e-mentoring

programs to business college students and noted that while a role model is valuable for some, in

a virtual mentoring program, acting as role model is not realistic as there is no opportunity to

observe the mentors real life interactions. The conclusions made by De Janasz et al. (2008)




CREATING CAREER SUCCESS THROUGH EFFECTIVE MENTORING RELATIONSHIPS 4

were that one could sustain a satisfying mentoring relationship even if not face-to-face.

According to their findings, the more frequent the contact a mentee had with his/her mentor, the

more support they received. In other words, the type of contact, e.g. face-to-face, email or

phone, was less important than the frequency of contact in a mentoring relationship. The

findings of Bean et al. (2014) and De Janasz et al. (2008) suggest that mentees found their

mentoring relationship more satisfying when they spent more time as a pair.

Socioeconomic Similarities

Blickle et al. (2010) studied former college students who were established in their careers

and who had been mentored in college. They concluded that mentees from families of higher

socioeconomic status were more successful finding mentors and enjoying a fruitful mentoring

relationship. However, Blickle et al. (2010) also acknowledged that mentees of a higher

socioeconomic status perhaps were better educated on the merits of a mentoring relationship and

were encouraged by family to participate. Furthermore, they theorized that mentees of a higher

socioeconomic status may have more access to senior executives at their place of employment or

elsewhere due to their family background and this could have been a contributing factor in their

achieving greater career success.

Gender

Blickle et al. (2010) also evaluated the role of gender in achieving positive mentoring

outcomes and realizing greater career success. While their findings indicated that gender did not

play a role in improving an individuals future career success, the authors did point out the

sample studied had a low percentage of females (24.6%) as compared to the number of males

that participated. It is not clear if the sample design in the Blickle et al (2010) study, i.e., lower

ratio or women, or if cultural differences in female business women in Germany contributed to

CREATING CAREER SUCCESS THROUGH EFFECTIVE MENTORING RELATIONSHIPS 5

the positive feedback. Blickle et al. (2010) stated that women in Germany do not perceive it

difficult to find mentors as businesswomen in other countries do. Dimitriadis et al. (2012),

looked at medical students mentored by faculty and alumni at LMU School of Medicine and

found that only one out of every five male mentees chose a female mentor even though there

were sufficient numbers of female mentors for mentees to choose. Conversely, Dimitriadis et al.

(2012) findings indicated that female mentees did not have a similar bias in choosing their

mentor based on gender (p. 7).

Like Identities

Arenofsky (1998) stated, Sometimes people gravitate toward role models or mentors

because they share the same interests (p. 1). Gannon (2011) suggested that mentees looked for

mentors with similar interests at the outset of the relationship and found having common

interests was comforting when starting a new relationship. However, in the long run, they found

having similar interests did not necessarily result in a more satisfying partnership (dyad) or a

successful outcome. Arenofsky (1998) commented, where you find a mentor or role model, for

instance, among relatives, in a school based or other formal program or from a list of personal

contacts, is not as important as whom you choose (p. 3). Although Arenofskys article was

published in 1998, more recent researchers and authors such as Blickle et al. (2010) and Gannon

et al. (2011) support the theory that like-minded identities resulted in more positive outcomes.

Jefferies and Skidmore (2010) studied medical school fellowship students that had participated in

a collaborative mentorship program at the University of Toronto. In the collaborative

mentorship program, medical students rotated across several sites where different specialties

were housed, e.g., neonatal, etc. With each rotation, students were provided with new teams of

faculty mentors. The findings from the study indicated that mentees did not prefer an individual




CREATING CAREER SUCCESS THROUGH EFFECTIVE MENTORING RELATIONSHIPS 6

mentor to a pairing with a Faculty Advisory Committee Triad (p. 2). The mentee responses

also showed that a very small percentage of mentee participants felt that the mentors should have

similar ethnic or cultural backgrounds to that of the mentees (p. 3). De Janasz et al. (2008), who

studied the benefits of e-mentoring, said that their findings suggested that perceived similarity is

a strong predictor of e-mentoring effectiveness while actual similarity is not (p. 405). They

theorize that electronic means of establishing mentoring relationships reduces the opportunity to

make observable judgments of mentee by mentor and vice versa, thus eliminating the initial

unconscious/subconscious bias that may be assigned to person following an initial face-to-face

meeting.

Experience & Emotional Intelligence

Ramani, Gruppen and Kachur (2006) wrote in Twelve Tips for Developing Effective

Mentors that past research reports identify characteristics that are valuable in a mentor, for

example, characteristics such as being knowledgeable and respected in their field, being

responsive and available, having good listening skills and being able to give positive as well as

constructive feedback. Ramani et al. (2006) suggested that not all mentors have these

characteristics and that more mentoring training should be provided to mentors to add to the

effectiveness of mentoring programs. Dimitriadis et al. (2012) found that a mentors stature,

experience and communication skills were highly valued by mentees and were very effective in

helping mentees achieve their personal and /or career goals.

Time Constraints and Availability

The results outlined by Jefferies et al. (2010) showed that mentors and mentees attributed

barriers to effective mentoring due to the mentees lack of time. Bean et al. (2014) similarly

found that both mentor and mentee respondents had less satisfying relationships when they




CREATING CAREER SUCCESS THROUGH EFFECTIVE MENTORING RELATIONSHIPS 7

experienced time constraints. Respondents consistently noted that the more frequently that

mentees had contact with mentors, regardless of the method of contact, e.g., in person one-on-

one meetings, email exchange or phone conversations, the more positive the participants

experience was with the program. Douglass et al. (2013) agreed that time and availability were

important. Their results showed that one-on-one time ranked as one of the top two factors of an

effective mentoring relationship. In the study done in the UK by researchers Gannon et al.

(2012), they found mentees often cited time pressures and competing priorities impactful to the

time spent with their mentors and this finding correlated with the same mentees opinions on

their satisfaction with the overall program. There also seemed to be a correlation between less

frequent meetings/contact and time pressures and whether the mentoring program was voluntary

or not, i.e., when a mentee was required to participate in the mentoring program, statistically they

met less frequently with their mentor advisors and had lower satisfaction with the overall

program.

What makes an ideal (or effective) mentor?

In the research literature reviewed, the pairings in each study varied widely, from peer

mentoring dyads, to alumni/student dyads, executive managers/new graduate pairings and so on.

All consistently found significant value in the mentoring relationship outcomes and felt the

pairing met the defined objective(s) of the program. However, none of the mentoring programs

studied found the silver bullet, i.e., what specific characteristic or combination of

characteristics makes for the ideal and most satisfying mentor/mentee relationship. This leads us

to the research question that will be explored in this study. This research study sets out to

determine what characteristic or combination of characteristics in a mentor result in greater

career success for the mentee. Is it important that the mentees gender and socioeconomic status




CREATING CAREER SUCCESS THROUGH EFFECTIVE MENTORING RELATIONSHIPS 8

match with mentors? Is it important for the mentor and mentee to have like identities or

interests? Is the degree of professional experience or the mentors emotional intelligence

important to building a strong mentoring relationship and enabling the mentee to achieve greater

career success? Career success includes one or more of the following for the mentee: higher

compensation, career progression and/or promotions, job satisfaction and/or satisfaction with

their career trajectory. Success is measured by evaluating the mentees salaries, advancement

and their happiness and/or satisfaction in their careers following their involvement in the

mentoring program.

Method

Many studies on mentoring showed that mentees found great benefits in having a mentor.

The purpose of this study is to further explore the value of a mentor, particularly for business

college students, and attempt to identify which aspects of a mentoring relationship lead to higher

degrees of satisfaction for the mentees, and whether satisfaction with the program and the

mentees mentor correlate to the mentees future career success.

Participants and Sampling Procedure

All 250 students in the BSU College of Managements mentoring program were

contacted by email and asked to join to the mentoring program study. A total of 76 students

responded to the email indicating their interest in participating, a response rate of 30%. A

subsequent email was sent to the 76 volunteer students and their mentors to provide disclosures

on confidentiality and informed consent forms. After all informed consent forms were returned,

we then stratified the volunteer population by gender to emulate the make-up of total population

of 250 students. There were 150 female students and 100 male students (60%/40%) enrolled in




CREATING CAREER SUCCESS THROUGH EFFECTIVE MENTORING RELATIONSHIPS 9

the Bridgewater State University Business School Mentoring program population. From the 76

volunteers, we noted that the sample included 64 women and 12 men. For our study sample, we

needed 10 male mentees and 15 female mentees. Once our volunteer pool was stratified, we then

used the simple random sampling method to select 10 males from the population of 12

volunteers and 15 females from the population of 64 female volunteers.

Measurements

The measurements for this study consisted of a background profile form and two

questionnaires. The background profile form was first administered to all of the individuals in

the sample population and we planned to use the background profiles when reporting the final

study results. The background profile requested additional information on the demographics of

the participants, e.g., age, socioeconomic status and ethnicity, and it also included two specific

questions. The intent of the background profile was to establish a baseline on the expectations of

the mentees, i.e., their personal goals and objectives, at the outset of the program.

Background Profile

Q1. What do you hope to achieve most from the mentoring program. Please rank in order of

importance:

___Skills development

___Career planning and advice

___Job hunting and networking

___Business industry knowledge

___Time management

___Academic Support

___Other, please specify

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Q2. Have you participated in mentoring programs previously? Y/N

The duration of the mentor program study will be nine months, aligned with the

anticipated end date of the current program pairings, and the first questionnaire will be issued

upon closure of the program. In late May 2016 when the program closes for these

mentor/mentee pairs, all mentors and mentees will receive questionnaire one. The questionnaire

will be comprised of a total of 13 items, 6 general questions, 5 questions using a 5-point Likert

scale and two open-ended questions. See Appendix A for the list of questions that will be on

questionnaire one.

Because the goal of this study is to evaluate the impact of an effective mentoring

relationship to career success, it is necessary to conduct a longitudinal study and evaluate the

outcomes sometime after the student is mentored, has graduated from college and has entered the

workforce. Thus, a second questionnaire will be sent to the mentee participants two years after

the mentees graduation from college. Similar to Blickle et al (2010), we will use a two-year

period for this longitudinal study, so that mentees can establish themselves in their career and we

can collect career-related data. The second and final measurement will again be taken in

questionnaire form. The questionnaire will contain a total of 11 items, 8 general questions, 3

questions using a 5-point Likert scale and 1 open-ended question. The questions that will be

asked in the final questionnaire include:

Q1. Are you currently employed? Y/N

Q2. How long have you been in your current job?

Q3. Are you in the field/career that you sought two years ago?

Q4. How soon after graduation did you find employment?

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Q5. Have you been promoted or been given higher responsibilities at your current place of

employment?

Q6. Are you satisfied with the rate of advancement you have achieved?

Q7. Have you continued to seek out and partner with mentors in your organization or

professional community?

Q8. I believe my experience in the BSU mentoring program gave me the skills necessary to grow

professionally and/or advance my career.

1 = Strongly Disagree 2= Disagree 3= Neutral 4=Agree 5=Strongly Agree

Q9. I am happy with where I am in my career and believe my BSU mentor helped me reach my

career goals.

1 = Strongly Disagree 2= Disagree 3= Neutral 4=Agree 5=Strongly Agree

Q10. I am satisfied with my career progress and future career direction.

1 = Strongly Disagree 2= Disagree 3= Neutral 4=Agree 5=Strongly Agree

Q11. Reflecting on your past experience in the BSU Mentoring program, what aspects of your

relationship with your college mentor were most helpful to you in achieving career satisfaction?

Please explain.

Results

Following completion of the study, we will report the results of the findings using tables

for the quantitative responses and using narrative description for the reporting the responses to

the qualitative open-ended questions. The narrative description will also include a summary of

the information that was collected via the background profile forms.

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For reporting the quantitative results of Questionnaire one, we will include the data

collected, expressed as means, standard deviations and percentages. Means and standard

deviations will be used to show the responses to the Likert-scale questions, and percentages and

standard deviations will be used to report on the responses to the general questions. We will use

narrative descriptions to outline themes and commonalities seen in the responses to the set of

open-ended questions.

For reporting results to questionnaire two, we will again include the data in a table,

expressed in means and standard deviations to show responses to the Likert-scale questions, and

expressed in percentages and standard deviations to show the responses to the general questions.

For reporting the responses to questionnaire twos open-ended questions, here also we will use a

narrative description to share themes and commonalities, and will add our observations on how

similar or dissimilar the responses are compared to questionnaire one.

A third table will be included in the Results section to show the correlation between the

respondents level of satisfaction with the mentoring program as reported in Questionnaire one to

their level of satisfaction in their current job/career. We will use the Pearson product-moment

correlation coefficient to express the relationship between the two sets of data, specifically Q5

from questionnaire one to Q10 from questionnaire two. We will also show the coefficient of

determination to represent the correlation in percentages and finally examine the relationship of

the means by performing a t-test on means reported for Q5 in questionnaire one and Q8, Q9, Q10

from questionnaire two. We will provide a narrative to summarize if and how the data supports

our research hypothesis, which was to determine if matching a mentee with a mentor based on

gender, socioeconomic similarities, or interests such as field of study or career industries

significantly increases a mentees future career satisfaction. We will also share insights from the




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data highlighting factors or characteristics from the studied mentoring relationships that seem

most important to creating career satisfaction for the mentees.

Discussion

As mentioned previously, the purpose of this research study is to determine what factors

or characteristics in a mentoring relationship are most important to creating future career success

and/or satisfaction. Through our measures, we are establishing whether the mentee had a

positive mentoring experience and we will be collecting data from the participants on their

specific experiences, for example, what did they expect to get out of the program, did they get

what they expected from the program, were they happy with their mentor, what topic areas did

they cover with their mentor, how often did they meet, etc. If the responses to questionnaire two

show that the participants have achieved success, we expect that we will see that they had a

positive mentoring experience. We will see if there commonalities across the respondents that

would suggest what factors of the program seem to be key to later career success. We have

hypothesized that pairing mentees with mentors of like gender, socioeconomic status or career

specialty will not significantly increase a mentees future career satisfaction. We expect that the

data from our study will show that the key contributors are quality and depth of the mentoring

relationship, success fostering skill development such as leadership, networking and

communications skills, and having someone accessible and knowledgeable that can guide, advise

and sometimes advocate for you when making career decisions/plans.

Limitations

In order to manage time and costs, we chose to study participants in an existing

mentoring program at Bridgewater State University. As such, we started our study with a sample

of convenience, i.e., we solicited participants who were already enrolled in the mentoring




CREATING CAREER SUCCESS THROUGH EFFECTIVE MENTORING RELATIONSHIPS 14

program. Additionally, we then asked for students in the mentoring program to volunteer for our

study, which introduced self-selection bias. Because of our initial approach in identifying the

study population, readers should be cognizant of the potential impact this approach will have to

the results. It is likely that the mentees used in our the study may already have established

positive views on mentoring and mentoring outcomes so questionnaire one may reflect some

bias. We were not able to account for the sample of convenience bias; however, we worked to

reduce the self-selection bias by creating a subset of the study volunteers, using the simple

random sampling process.

We also must consider that there is threat of mortality impacting the results of this study.

Since this is a longitudinal study with the posttest being issued two years after completion of the

study, we expect that there may be some participants who will drop out and not respond to the

posttest, i.e., questionnaire two. Thus, the statistical data we collect, following the posttest, may

not reflect an accurate or complete picture of the how the mentoring experience correlates to

career success.

Those mentees that express satisfaction in their careers, we may find have they continued

to work with mentors in the workplace or informally, or perhaps, mentees attitudes after

questionnaire two may be attributed to the maturation process. Maturation and/or later

experiences with mentors post-BSU could be contribute to the mentees later job satisfaction.

The maturation and/or new mentor experiences could be factors that confound the results we will

be attempting to show at the end of this study.

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Conclusion

It may be worthwhile to perform additional research in the future to more closely study

the format of mentor/mentee meetings in order to understand if there is a particular approach or

style, or a particular set or tools or resources, etc. that contribute to mentees achieving

satisfaction in their mentoring relationship and ultimately, in their career. Using the method of

test-retest reliability may be useful to obtain more detailed information and gain deeper insights.

Additionally, it would be helpful if future research studies included focus groups as a form of

measurement. Obtaining in-depth qualitative data via a phenomenological approach will assist

in exposing additional mentees perceptions. Conversely, it may confirm that the themes, that

were previously exposed, have reached a saturation point.

In conclusion, we expect our study, similar to the studies of Blickle et al. (2010) and

Bean et al. (2014), will show that there is significant value to mentees, who participate in a

mentoring program, as it gives them important skills before entering the workforce. Ideally, the

discovery(ies), from the data we collect, will be valuable information that future students and

universities can integrate into subsequent programs. Whether we find that the most significant

value and benefit to a mentee is the development of foundational skills, or that it merely provides

an important and guiding support mechanism, the more we learn and share the more satisfied and

successful mentoring programs and college graduates will become. We hope that the key

findings from our study will help students and universities in the future by giving them

additional insights into the How-to to make mentoring relationships more satisfying and

productive, and help students become successful, happy and gainfully employed individuals in

the workplace.

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References

Arenofsky, J. (1998) What Mentors & Role Models Can Do For You. Career World Nov/Dec98,
Vol. 27, Issue 3

Bean, N., Lucas, L., & Hyers, L. (2014) Mentoring in Higher Education Should be the Norm to
Assure Success: Lessons Learned from the Faculty Mentoring Program. Mentoring &
Tutoring: Partnership in Learning, 22:1, 56-73, DOI: 10.1080/13611267.2014.882606

Blickle, G., Schneider, P.B., & Meurs, J.A. (2010) Antecedents and Consequences of Perceived
Barriers to Obtaining Mentoring: A Longitudinal Investigation. Journal of Applied
Social Psychology

De Janasz, S., Ensher, E.A., & Heun, C. (2008) Virtual Relationships and Real Benefits Using
E-mentoring to Connect Business Students With Practicing Managers. Mentoring &
Tutoring: Partnership in Learning, 16:4,394-411, DOI: 10.180/13611260802433775

Dimitriadis, K., von der Borch, P., Stormann, S., Meinel, F.G., Moder, S., Reincke, M., &
Fischer, M.R. (2012) Characteristics of Mentoring Relationships Formed by Medical
Students and Faculty. Med Educ Online

Douglass, A.G., Smith, D.L., & Smith, L.J. (2013) An Exploration of the Characteristics of
Effective Undergraduate Peer-Mentoring Relationships. Mentoring & Tutoring:
Partnership in Learning, 21:2, 219-234, DOI:10.1080/13611267.2013.813740

Gannon, J. & Maher, A. (2012) Developing Tomorrows Talent: the Case of an Undergraduate
Mentoring Programme. Education + Training, Vol 54 Iss 6 pp. 440-455

Jefferies, A., & Skidmore, M. (2010) Evaluation of a Collaborative Mentorship Program in a

Multi-site Postgraduate Training Program. Medical Teacher, 2010: 32: 695-697

Ramani, S., Gruppen, L., & Krajic Kachur, E. (2006) Twelve Tips for Developing Effective
Mentors. Medical Teacher, Vol. 28, No. 5, pp. 404-408

CREATING CAREER SUCCESS THROUGH EFFECTIVE MENTORING RELATIONSHIPS 17

Appendix A

Questionnaire One

Likert-scale questions

1. My mentoring experience was positive. (scale 1 to 5)

2. I was satisfied with my assigned mentor. (scale 1 to 5)
3. My mentor shared similar interests to me. (scale 1 to 5)
4. I will seek out mentors again in the future. (Scale 1 to 5)
5. I achieved the goals I had set for myself. (Scale 1 to 5)

Specific Questions

1. What did you and your mentor focus on most during the program?
a. Skills development, communications, resume-writing
b. Career planning
c. Business networking
d. Building industry knowledge & business acumen
e. Academic support
f. Other, please specify
2. How often did you and your mentor meet during the program? Meeting could be face to
face, by phone or through email or a form of social media
a. Not at all
b. Once a quarter
c. Once a month
d. Once a week
e. Several times per week
3. What percentage of your meetings was face to face?
4. What percentage of your meetings was conducted by phone?
5. What percentage of your contact was via email or social media?
6. Did you attend business or networking events with your mentor?

Open-ended Questions
1. What characteristics or aspects of your relationships contributed most to your
experience?
2. What characteristics or aspects of your relationships contributed least to your experience?