MENTORSHIP PROGRAM BY IMT ALUMNI GOING GREAT GUNS

When the ‘Mentor an IMTian’ programme was announced six months back by the alumni organization, many, yours truly included were a bit skeptical on the whole thing. But like any other corporate initiatives with its own set of imponderables but the team wants to go on, well, here’s another success story. And the good news is that the alumni have a key role in driving this. 248 of the students of 1^st year have signed on 65 mentors amongst us. I decided to ask some folks on their take on the whole thing.

Ridhesh Sharma of the 1^st year has this to say when I asked him on what he feels on this programme . “It has also helped me in understanding first hand from an industry professional the applications of my major (marketing) in some of the sectors. But, the most important value-addition which I see happening is getting to observe a successful professional, and noticing his approach towards his life. At the same time, I am getting to network”. Well said Ridhesh.

For Ridhesh's mentor Dev Amritesh (1999), mentoring comes from an internal motivation. On why he has decided to take the challenge to be a mentor which could add to pressure on his time from his job as Chief of Marketing at Domino’s. “Of the various things that I did during my academic development years, (School, Engineering education and MBA), the most profound impact on me was during the MBA course at IMT. While the classroom discussions were good most of the times and stimulating at times, the real value addition happened due to interaction with my peers, seniors and juniors who I found had experiences that I did not have. It was in IMT that I found the answer to this question. A lot of that had to do with the interactions that I had with various people, including Alumni, Guest Alumni faculty and so on.” Dev, your sentiments are well received and appreciated.Dev follows a structured programme with well chalked out milestones . Says he, “attempt is to help them understand themselves better, doing this early in the day will help them to gain greater competence in areas that they identify. Other than this we will focus on sharing of some knowledge and practices specifically from sectors in which I have some experience and so on.”

Deepa Krishnan of 1^st year (mentor: Aasheet Makhija, 1993 ) feels that the programme is good and “this exercise is proving to be useful in terms of the exposure to different industries that may help us in making career decisions. In our discussion with the mentor in the first meeting, we planned to look into different industries as a source of career alternative (for which we had to make presentations on industry analysis) and meet some experts across industries whose valuable inputs could be helpful to us”.

Deepa's mentor Asheet Makhija, who works for IBM feels there is a lot of visible vibrancy in the Alumni initiatives which the Alcom & faculty are taking.He says," I think the mentees benefit from my experiential learnings. The main objective is to ensure that they make a very informed decision of subject choice & organisation thereafter". Asheet also feels that there should be a mechanism to capture and share relavant stuff which can beneficial to rest of the batch.The most important point that Asheet emphasises is that the learnings are mutual, and yes, he too gains out of the whole excercise.Valuable point, Asheet.

Incidentally, why the programme was was lapped up was the enthusiasm shown by the alumni. Currently, this is offered to alumni based in NCR region but downstream this would be available to rest of the world with mentor-mentee interactions largely facilitated by technology. (If you too want to be part of the programme as a mentor, do get in touch with folks at the alumni relations)