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Nowadays mentoring is featured in most modern companies, especially those that relate to middle and large-sized businesses. Commonly, the number of employees is constantly changing, some people leave, whilst other workers arrive and become employees upon hire. The more processes the organization has on a daily basis, the more complicated it is to onboard new employees as they are to figure out the peculiarities of all of the workflows to fit in quicker.
Hence, mentoring or shadowing aims to resolve all issues connected to onboarding and make it smooth and simple for everyone. However, to make the mentoring program really effective, it should be structured and managed with the help of software solutions developed specifically for your mentoring course.
Keep reading as we are going to discuss why mentoring is economically feasible and how to integrate your mentoring platform into your business workflows.
Target Audience of Mentoring Apps
A mentor is someone who has already achieved the type of success you desire and is willing to help you achieve it yourself. A mentor offers their advice and insights for free, if you’re paying for it then that person qualifies as a consultant in any industry, from startup CTO to high-level managers. A mentor just wants to see you improve and succeed because at some level they see themselves or at least many attributes that had been their own in the past in the trainees
Win-Win Nature of Mentorship
Of course, before you can get a mentor you should put in some independent work first. You should have the desire to improve, master a discipline, and have great potential to attract a mentor.
But it needs to be stressed that cooperation is hard for both sides. Whether you are searching for a mentor or an apprentice, the bar is exceptionally high. Finding a good apprentice is equally as hard as finding a mentor.
We found this challenge interesting and started thinking about how we would connect the two sides most efficiently. Eventually, based on our previous experience, we’ve done a little research about a mentor search app that would connect mentors and apprentices.
Mentoring App Development
Each and every app plays around the primary use case and functions that support it. Whether it’s Uber or Airbnb, or Sea App, app developers always focus on the main use case that provides value to the user.
Mentoring Search App use case is simple:
- The user gets in and chooses the Mentor/Apprentice side.
- Sets filters, navigates the map.
- Familiarizes themselves with mentor/apprentice information.
- Contacts the other side via message or video call.
- Books the meeting, video call.
Hereafter, we’ll go over the main technical building blocks that would support this use case scenario.
Geolocation
Mentors and people who previously had a mentor agree that the ideal candidate would be someone from their geographic area, city, state, or country. This is very important because only during personal meetings can you tap into the full potential of mentorship.
Industry / Occupation
Another important criterion to consider while searching for a mentor is industry and occupation match. Say, if you are in construction, you won’t get any benefit from shadowing a dentist from a strictly professional standpoint. People always seek someone from their niche.
The ideal mentor is someone who’s already done the work through and through, possibly to the point of creating and selling a company in the same industry, and is now done with that work. The mentor search app can also serve people who are running a similar business model to your [employer] company with way higher stakes but in a slightly different niche.
Types of Mentorship
There are three types of mentoring, each with its own advantages and weak sides. Your app should allow users to choose what kind of mentorship they’re up for:
- Individual mentoring – The most efficient type of mentoring, where all of the problems and experiences are shared privately, one-on-one.
- Group mentoring – This kind of mentoring proves to be extremely effective for people who seek extra motivation and need extra inspiration and support along their journey.
- Collective mentoring – This kind of mentoring is somehow similar to networking and group therapy. By using this format, users can find apprentices with similar business problems and support each other. If this format is selected, the app will search for mentors and connect people who are running similar business models but in different industries.
Business Exit
We should stress that it is super important to have a mentor who can look at the business from the outside. A true mentor is a person who won’t become your potential competitor or a customer, but someone who’s already made an exit and has no personal conflicts of interest with helping someone grow.
Surveys found that 80% of business owners seeking mentorship consider whether mentors are still operating a business in their niche to be one of the top factors in finding a “teacher”. Therefore, your mentor search app should have a dedicated checkbox called something similar to: “Business Exit”.
Achievements
This is one of the most important pieces of information the app should collect and consider. Unfortunately, the truly accomplished and successful professionals rarely boast about all of their achievements to the full extent publically. Therefore, the app should keep this info in private until the very last moment before the apprentice contacts a mentor. Think of this filter as the last step in the user’s journey.
Another approach is to curate the list of mentors. You can add them only after private research, where you (as an app owner) will manually validate the accomplishments of each participant. This way you will raise the value of your mentor app in the eyes of the users.
Messaging & Video Streaming
This is a must-have function of every p2p app. Whether you’re building an Online Mentoring Application or a Matching app, messaging is super important. We’ve even made a location-based chatting system that connects people based on their position.
You can use private messages as a monetization option, just like Tinder and LinkedIn. Users may pay you for a first contact message or for the ability to open a mentor’s profile, where his contacts sit.
If you want to develop an online mentoring app, you should consider Live Streaming functionality. We’ve covered the basics of live streaming development in this article, and made a dedicated fitness app with live streaming options.
Beneficial use of the mentoring software for business
Mentoring solutions are especially in demand by large organizations with a huge number of employees. It is complicated to manage all departments and workers properly. So company leaders or heads of departments can appoint highly experienced workers as mentors to teach and help new employees become a part of the company, assimilate them, and bring them up to speed. Thus, we would like to present and share with you the main benefits the monitoring app can provide for your company:
- Quick and more efficient onboarding of new employees;
- Individual approach to each mentee;
- Effective employee training from day one to help them blend in easily and quickly;
- Improved communication between different company departments;
- Goal tracking for each mentee as well as for the whole organization;
- The general strengthening of experience possessed by your “new” employees.
Success stories – Altamira
At this point, we would like to share our experience in developing mentoring apps of different types and for different aims. We selected the most prominent success stories of our development team who built highly functional solutions that help people develop their skills with the help of technologies.
CTRL Golf – Mentoring App with IoT
Talking about the unique way of mentoring we cannot overlook CTRL Golf – an innovative mobile application that teaches users to play golf considering the individual approach to each golf player. This type of mentoring is a little bit different as users get recommendations from their application (i.e. computer algorithm), as opposed to a real trainer. However, such training sessions can be even more effective than real person coaching due to the fact that players wear special gloves equipped with sensors that scan the player`s swings, analyze them, and provide pieces of advice on how to improve their swings and playing skills in general.
The level of the user`s golf skill doesn’t matter as this app is suitable for experienced players as well as for newcomers; as the app`s slogan postulates: “Practice your perfect”. The recommendations are generated based on special algorithms developed before the cooperation with the Altamira development team. We successfully developed an Android-based solution that correctly connects with sensors located on the specially designed gloves. Our task was also to redesign the look of the running statistics and recommendations in a more convenient way.
Surf & Yoga
Surf & Yoga is a classic example of a sport mentoring application. The purpose of this solution is to connect surfers all over the world to share their knowledge, experience, skills, and so on. Users can register as trainers (meaning mentors) or as students who are considered to be beginners in surfing and/or yoga and are willing to learn more from seasoned veterans that they would like to call their mentors. Mentees or students can search for trainers located in their neighborhood thanks to the geolocation function.
All they have to do is just adjust some filters to find a suitable person based on what they need. After that, students can choose the lesson they need and schedule a meeting with a mentor directly via the Surf & Yoga platform, so there is no need to even leave the comfort of their homes to have a personalized learning experience from surfing and/or yoga gurus or even wirelessly surf the internet to find highly qualified instructors.
Tips on how to integrate the Mentoring app
All tasks and tips we listed above are handy and building out such a solution is reasonable, particularly for a development team that has already had experience in developing mentoring apps.
Initially, you might think that custom software is something really expensive and out of reach. However, a custom software solution is a great investment in the future of your company as a custom mentoring app will save time and effort for your employees as they will be able to share their knowledge and experience within the company to make the business process as efficient as possible in the short run.
Generally, the cost of developing a custom mentoring app starts from USD 80,000 and depends on the range of functionality and other requirements, particularly for your case.
We advise you to schedule a consultation with our Business Analyst to hold an analysis of your organization and look for ways to boost the overall company productivity with a custom mentoring platform.
FAQ
Bottom Line
Mentoring has already become an investable part of middle and large companies as it is a very unique and promising industry. It requires wide technical expertise and a clear understanding of its specifics due to the particular industry though. On the other hand, you’ll be rewarded with high revenues and stable income. By getting into this business you’ll face a demanding audience with its very specific needs and wants. The development of a mobile mentoring app may require high expertise and experience. But having a professional software team on your side with a special background will certainly clear lots of bumps from the road.