Employment Opportunity for Students with Disabilities Mentoring Program

Overview	EOSD Events	EOSD Mentorship Program	Student Resources

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Registration Required

Please note that the Mentorship Program is only open to students with disabilities registered to participate in the EOSD program. Register by completing the registration form.

Overview

Mentoring plays an important role in employee engagement and retention, contributes significantly to individual and organizational productivity, and make employees feel valued.

Students participating in EOSD have the opportunity to participate in a self-directed mentoring program, designed to support students in:

• Developing a career path
• Assisting the mentee to develop cognitive skills
• Learning to network
• Developing a specific skill that the mentor and mentee agree on

Learn more about the program by reading: EOSD Mentorship Program – Terms of Reference - 2024

Please note, we encourage you to reach out to multiple mentors to begin the process of finding a mentor. Some mentors may already have accepted as many mentees as they can, or they may not be able to respond in a timely manner. For this reason, it’s important to consider multiple mentors to start. You are also welcome to have more than one mentor to help expand your networks and learn about diverse aspects of the Government of Canada and possible career paths.

Available Mentors

The 2023-2024 Mentorship program is now open! You can check available mentors here: Mentor Biographies 2023-2024

Start Your Mentorship Journey

The EOSD Mentorship Program has two ways for you to find mentor(s) that you feel are best suited to you:

Self Directed

You can browse the Mentor Biographies of available mentors and reach out to them directly to initiate contact using the Template for Contacting a Prospective Mentor.

If you are contacting multiple mentors, you should send an individual email to each potential mentor.

You and the prospective mentor can then correspond directly to determine whether you would both like to move forward with the mentoring partnership.

If both you and a mentor wish to engage in a mentoring partnership, you should:

• Review the EOSD Mentorship Program – Terms of Reference - 2024
• Complete the EOSD Mentorship Agreement Form and submit it to the EOSD Team.

Matching [2024 Pilot Project - Coming Soon]

New this year, you can opt to have the EOSD Team match you with one mentor by submitting the Student Mentorship Matching Application Form (form coming soon). The EOSD Team will review the application form and find the mentor that best matches your preferences. The EOSD Team will then email the mentor and the mentee to confirm the match and connect you.

Please note, that matches will depend on the mentor’s capacity (each mentor may only have up to three mentees) and your preferences. The EOSD Team cannot guarantee a perfect match, so you and the prospective mentor must determine whether you would like to move forward with the mentoring partnership.

If both you and a mentor wish to engage in a mentoring partnership, you should:

• Review the EOSD Mentorship Program – Terms of Reference - 2024
• Complete the EOSD Mentorship Agreement Form and submit it to the EOSD Team.

Tips and Tricks - Get the Most out of Mentorship

Some suggestions on how to structure your mentoring sessions are provided below:

Getting Started

• Take some time to get to know one another and establish expectations
• Confirm the areas you would like to focus on in your mentoring sessions
• With your mentor, discuss any:

1. Confidentiality concerns
2. Possible conflicts of interest
3. Limitations of the mentoring relationship

Subsequent Sessions

Work with your mentor to determine the flow of your subsequent sessions, which could include:

• Talking about some of the areas of focus you identified
• Sharing knowledge and experience
• Asking questions and discussing follow-up questions that may have come up after sessions

Final Sessions

• Make sure you ask any outstanding questions you have
• Summarize how the mentor’s knowledge and experience could potentially be applied to your own work
• If you and your mentor are interested in continuing the mentor/mentee relationship, you can discuss this and work with your mentor to arrange additional sessions outside of the EOSD program

Resources

• Roles and Responsibilities of Mentees - Canada.ca
• Roles and Responsibilities of Mentors - Canada.ca
• Backgrounder for Mentors
• Mentorship Program for Students: Information for Mentors - Powerpoint Presentation
• Human Resources Council (HRC) Mentoring Guides
• Best Practices for Mentorship
• Mentorship Resources - wiki (gccollab.ca)
• EE Informal Networking and Mentorship
• List of prompt questions for mentees to ask during mentoring session (Accessible document)
• EOSD Mentorship Log - Bilingual (also available in an accessible English version)

Contact us

For additional information on the EOSD Mentorship program or to sign up as a mentor, contact the Public Service Commission’s Diversity and Inclusion Centre of Expertise.

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