Mentor Matching

Our application offers a digitized solution for women to effortlessly find and connect with mentors in tech, enhancing the mentorship experience with smart matching and easy communication tools.

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Initial Situation/Problem statement

Diversity in the tech industry is low. Many women are not entering the technology field or are leaving the industry because of the lack of a support system. As a result, there is a growing demand among women for support from a mentor to help them steer their careers in the tech industry. However, finding a mentor who can share their experience and be a sparring partner to discuss and brainstorm career opportunities is often a difficult task. Although TechFace offers a Mentor Matching program, which has attracted considerable interest from both mentors and mentees, its existing structure struggles to accommodate new participants. The manual workload associated with this program is significant, limiting its capacity to expand and serve more mentees. This challenge highlights the need for a more scalable approach to effectively match mentors with women in tech, fostering their career development.

Project Goal

By providing a digital solution and automating the currently manual process, we aim to streamline the mentorship experience. This technological advancement allows TechFace to offer more opportunities for mentees to find suitable mentors, thereby facilitating the building of purposeful and thriving careers in tech. Our project not only enhances the efficiency of the matching process but also significantly contributes to increasing diversity in the Swiss tech industry.

Developed Solution and its benefit

Our newly developed solution improves the existing process of matching mentees with suitable mentors. By bringing a digitized, user-centric approach to mentor matching, we make the journey from seeking a mentor to establishing a connection smoother and more efficient. Designed with the specific needs of both mentees and mentors in mind, this innovative platform ensures a seamless mentorship experience. Additionally, it greatly benefits the administrators of the platform by automating the matching process, eliminating the need to manually sort through applications. This not only saves significant time but also allows them to focus on other crucial initiatives to drive diversity in tech. Our solution provides the following core features:

For mentees and mentors:

• Digitized sign up for mentees and mentors
• Automized proposals of matching mentors to mentees
• Mentees can send requests for an introduction meeting including a personalized message to mentors
• Mentors can accept or reject such requests and send a message with a justification for their decision
• Possibility to start a chat between mentee and mentor to find a date for an introduction meeting

For the admin:

• The admin has a dashboard with an overview of registered mentees and mentors
• The admin can accept or reject mentors
• The admin can view the profile information of registered users
• The admin sees which mentees/mentors have matched and started a mentorship
• The admin can deactivate users

Testimonial
«We introduced the Mentor Matching program in 2020 to support female tech talents to succeed in their careers. However, the manual process was tedious and needed improvement for us to keep offering the program. To develop an app with a team of students was not only a great opportunity to make the program scalable, but also an enriching experience for me personally. The team was very interested in the topic as they recognized the added value of the program and the app. They brought in their own unique and diverse views and expertise to improve the process and make the program with the app even more valuable to female tech talents. This is just the starting point, and we are looking forward to growing the Mentor Matching program thanks to this great collaboration.»
Priska Burkard

Key terms

• Programming languagesC#, TypeScript
• Frontend StackAngular
• Backend Stack .NET Core
• DatabaseMS SQL
• Deployment PlatformDocker-Containers in Google Cloud

Client

TechFace
Priska Burkard
Co-Founder
8001 Zürich
https://techface.ch/

Team