Career mentor Program

Connect with a professional in the field and learn from their experiences to allow exploration of your own career exploration and professional goals. 

During your monthly meetings:

Come with questions and interests in a range of topics and have an open dialog about your future path. Learn about real perspectives and how a workplace functions daily. Mentors can help with strategic planning, discovering careers, and effective networking within the field. Work on your career portfolio, refining resumes, enhancing LinkedIn, and finding internships in your specialty. 

The student program expectations are:

• Be enrolled as an Eckerd College student during the Fall 2026 semester.

• Meet with their mentor at least once each month (minimum 30 minutes) from October through May.

• Take an active role in scheduling meetings and communicating professionally with their mentor.

• Participate in a required Career Mentor Program Orientation (dates and times will be announced – TBA).

• Complete the midpoint and final program evaluations.

To best prepare for the student application, we recommend the following:

• Visit the Career Center / Schedule an Appointment with the Career Center for:

  • Prepare what you would like to work on in the program (hint: we ask you for your professional goals) 

  • Review your resume (it is required to upload)

  • Take a professional headshot (it is required to upload)

• Go through the sample application to review questions on how you might answer

• Consider the reasons why/how a Career Mentor can help

• Review the Career Mentors and identify four Career Mentors that you would be interested in working with and why

The application does not look at your writing style or grammar; as long as you answer the questions, we are happy with that!

We can tell if you rushed through the application, so please plan accordingly and take your time.

You can review the Career Mentors here. We recommend that you consider the following when reading a Mentor's biography.

• Think beyond just a similar major or career path. Is there something interesting about them that you would like to learn more about?

• Does their current position or job function align with what you may want to do in the future?

• Are there similarities between their undergraduate experience and yours?

• Can they answer the questions that you have?

• Does their mentoring style match what you would like out of a Career Mentor?

The application is broken up into three different parts:

1. Who are you?

2. What is your motivation for joining the Career Mentor Program?

3. Mentor Preferences

From this, there are specific questions that have "weights" to them that will give you a "score" for each Career Mentor. The goal is to pair you with one of your top 4 preferences, or with one that the Career Center believes will be the best fit. 

It is not a guarantee that you will be selected into the program, we want to make sure that you have the best experience with a Career Mentor. We do not pair just to pair.