How are users matched?
By default, our algorithm looks at the below information when suggesting matches – Users can dismiss any proposed matches that show for them that they don’t feel are relevant to what they are looking for, and the system will take this into account.
Admin led matching
If you’ve set your mentoring programmes to ‘admin-led’ matching, then only you, as administrators will be able to facilitate matches. Even if the matching is ‘self-selected’, you can still conduct mentor matches as an administrator too.
Under the 'Mentoring' heading on the menu, and 'Admin Manual Matching', you will be taken to the page below where you will see a list of your users, and the ability to filter through the users by programme and mentor type.
Within this view, select the green ‘match’ button on the right hand side of any participant to then be taken to a list of up to 5 recommended mentoring matches for them.
You can then scroll down on this page to then search for a specific participant instead.
The admin-led matching allows you to filter in a number of ways, such as custom fields you may have set, availability and capacity. You can also limit the number of mentees per mentor.
Once you have found who you would like to match the user with, you would click the green 'match' button on the right again, and then confirm how long you would like the relationship to go on for, alongside how often you would like them to meet.
What happens when administrators match two participants -
As soon as you match two participants, both parties will receive an automated message, notifying them of the match. You can enable/disable this email (it’s enabled by default) within the ‘Automated Messaging’ page. Once matched, the participants will be able to begin engaging with the relationship.
You will not be able to begin matching until the ‘Mentoring Details’ section is complete. Profiles can be marked as completed without this section filled in.
To confirm a match has been made, you can go to the ‘Mentoring Reports’ page.
Self led matching:
If you have enabled for users to manage their own matching, they would be able to search through the platform and send their own request to a mentor/mentee.
There's a time limit for mentoring requests to be responded to.
If a mentor/mentee doesn’t respond to an inbound request for 7 days, we send a reminder. After 9 days a final reminder and after 11 days the request expires.
Bulk matching
You can choose to admin match participants in bulk, under ‘Admin Bulk Matching’ in the admin panel. Here you can choose to match your participants in one go with their suggested matches. You can filter through employees and also export the matches.
If you are wanting to match your mentors with more than one mentee, you can do this through bulk matching. Once the first list has been suggested and matched, you can then generate a second list of bulk proposed matches, and repeat the process.
If you had particular pairings in mind, then the admin led matching would be the best way forward, as you can search and select users to pair together.
Adding in custom matching rules -
If you’ve added any additional data capture fields (situated within ‘Configuration’) you will see a light-orange box where you can add custom matching rules.
These can apply to any data you are capturing (such as job level or seniority) to ensure you’re only showing suggested matches to the right participants.
An example of this would be if you didn't want users to be matched within the same department, or in Reverse Mentoring programmes you will be able to adjust the rules so recommended matches are following the structure of reverse mentoring (ie. senior leaders being matched with lower level staff).