21/10/2011

Job adverts: Build a Network of Professional Women Mentors


A really great women's organization in the Netherlands is advertizing for a coordinator to set up a network of top professional women in the region to mentor women who want to find a job.

Lets diagnose the Ask.

1. The network is for top professional women.

We looked last month at how networks add value to organizations.

In setting up this network, the organization should pay particular attention to
- providing structural links to people outside the reach of the members of the network
- supporting the creation of unique knowledge within the network, so that the network can provide answers to questions others operating on this same market have not been able to provide
and
- developing among the members of the network a sense of not being alone, of relationship, of being more than one person working for this goal.

2. The professional women will mentor mostly non-Dutch women to enter the Dutch labour market.

The network is set up to support women who's skills in networking have not been sufficient to find them a job. The women will have networks. They have circles of friends and contacts, at churches and mosques, in the neighbourhood, at the schools of their children, all of whom can be resources in their search for employment.

The professional women will be able to bring the women they are mentoring into contact with people outside the circles of the women themselves. If the mentor takes on a group of three at the same time, she can develop them as a triad. The triad learn together how to increase their ability to get value from the circles of people around them. 

My advice to the organization is to make the most of the opportunity they are creating. It would be a shame to think of networking as an address list and a monthly drink. Networks can be used much more effectively than that.

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