Deanna Shimota (00:00:05) - Welcome to The HR Tech Spotlight podcast. I'm Deanna Shimota, CEO of GrowthMode Marketing. The HR technology market is crowded, and we know it can be hard to find the best software solutions for your business in the sea of sameness. On this podcast, we shine a spotlight on some of the best up and coming technology options out there. Check it out if you are interested in learning about new, innovative solutions available in the market. And if you are with an HR tech company and interested in being considered for a guest spot. Stay tuned for details at the end of the show. Hello and welcome to a new episode of the HR Tech Spotlight. On this episode, we are exploring the Art of Mentoring a company combining evidence based mentoring expertise with the latest technological innovations to enable organizations to develop impactful, scalable, and cost-effective mentoring programs. Joining me to talk about Art of Mentoring and their technology is Chief Revenue Officer Bijay Mathew. It is great to have you on the show, Bijay.
Bijay Mathew (00:01:13) - Yeah, it's wonderful to be here.
Bijay Mathew (00:01:15) - I'm so excited to talk to you.
Deanna Shimota (00:01:17) - So tell our audience about your background in the HR tech space.
Bijay Mathew (00:01:22) - Yeah, I am new to the mentoring space. For many years I worked for Community Brands and we sold online job boards for associations. So I'm familiar with selling to HR. But now I sell something that actually transforms the people who use it, so it's a pretty different kind of experience. I often joke with my CEO that it's funny that you pay us to do this, because our cup gets filled every morning by having these transformative experiences that that our users have. And of course, he's very happy to say I'll gladly not pay you so hahahahaha!
Deanna Shimota (00:01:59) - So let's talk a little bit more about what Art of Mentoring actually does.
Bijay Mathew (00:02:04) - Yeah. So it's a mentoring software platform. So if you want to run a mentoring program inside your company or inside your association, where the people that partner with you to do that. So the platform of course has an algorithm for matching mentors and mentees. And people get really excited about the algorithm.
Bijay Mathew (00:02:21) - And it is powerful. If you and I were going to do a mentoring program with five pairs, we could do that pretty easily with a spreadsheet. It wouldn't be too hard. Once you get to about 20, it becomes difficult. Once you want to do 100, it's almost impossible. The algorithm creates matches such that in the way that your phone will tell you how to get places you wouldn't think of on your own. The algorithm will create matches that you wouldn't figure out left to your own devices, and it is very powerful. It is very cool. I actually think the power of the platform is beyond the matching. So first step is matching. We put your mentors and mentees into a questionnaire. The answer a series of questions. The algorithm does its magic creates this slate of matches. We always keep a human in the middle because things about your matches that the algorithm doesn't. So if I got matched with you and you recently got promoted over me, and you know I have some feelings about that, you might think that might not be the best match.
Bijay Mathew (00:03:17) - And you could, but I think the power of the platform comes in with we have resources that are built in, so you don't have to reinvent the wheel. You can customize them or of course add your own. We have a communication platform. So we have scheduled communications that once this program starts, they go out over the life of the program. That really keeps the train running on time. So if your program manager had to look away for a moment, nothing would fall over. One thing what we find with mentoring programs, mentoring is, is like getting healthy, right? Everyone is for it. You can't find anyone who's against it. Just like getting healthy. On January 1st, everyone joins the gym and you can't find a parking spot and you can't find a machine to use. And then by March 1st, the parking lot is empty and all of those things have fallen over. Mentoring programs often start with a big bang and excitement, and then because they lack the programmatic elements, they tend to fall over.
Bijay Mathew (00:04:09) - It's no one's job to run it. Whoever's tasked with the mentoring program has seven other, more pressing things they have on their daily list of things to do. So I think the power of the platform is the schedule, communications, the resources. We also have training for mentors and mentees. It's an online training. It sets their expectation of what this is like. So as mentoring is as old as time, but being in a structured mentoring program for a lot of people, that's new. And so that training helps alleviate the reluctance on both sides. The mentors who may not want to sign up for what they think is an unlimited time commitment and it really isn't. Or the mentees who just don't know how to take charge of this relationship.
Deanna Shimota (00:04:53) - What is the big challenge or problem that you see facing organizations today that Art of Mentoring can really help with?
Bijay Mathew (00:05:02) - Yeah. So I have a very strong opinion about this. I'm glad you asked. So, the problem that most organizations face is if you if you don't do anything, your top 3% of employees will, on their own, find mentors, seek new knowledge.
Bijay Mathew (00:05:20) - find that way to move into a higher gear. And by the way, those people will probably outpace their desire for advancement, will probably outpace what you have to offer. So if you do nothing, your best 3% will do will take care of this on your own. You leave the other 97% to chance, and so people who are less extroverted or less connected will not be able to find mentors in your company. so I think that's a cynical way to approach talent development, right? Leave it to chance and hopefully everyone will do the right things by you, by them, and by your company. This unlocks that a structured mentoring program unlocks that for the other 97% of your workforce.
Deanna Shimota (00:06:06) - What would you say makes Art of Mentoring different from the other options that employers have out in the marketplace?
Bijay Mathew (00:06:15) - Yeah, that's a great question. We have many competitors. We run into 3 or 4 a lot, but there's probably 30 or 40 mentoring software platforms in the market. The thing that makes us different is we were started by mentoring experts and not software experts.
Bijay Mathew (00:06:31) - And so our lens is a little bit different. Everything we do is based on evidence based mentoring methods. And our goal is for you to have a successful mentoring program. We have a lot of free resources that we make available on our website, because we want you to be successful, whether you contract with us or not. And I mentioned the software platform. We also do the training, the online training separately, and we also do mentoring training workshops. And so we have some clients who will use us for training their mentors and mentees, doing workshops for mentors and mentees. But they'll use a different software platform where they'll do it in-house on their own. And we're happy to work with them because, again, we want them to be successful. Usually they end up 1 or 2 years later using our software platform, but it's not a requirement. Again, we want you to be we want mentoring to be successful, and we want to extend it to as many as many employees as possible.
Deanna Shimota (00:07:27) - What type of companies are the perfect fit for working with your organization?
Bijay Mathew (00:07:32) - Yeah, so when I was on the outside when I met the CEO and was talking to him about this opportunity, when he told me that customer mix, I told him he has to pick a lane because we have corporate clients, we have association clients, and we have government clients.
Bijay Mathew (00:07:47) - And I said, you can't effectively run a go to market with all of those verticals here in the US. So the company is based in Australia. They've been doing this for ten years in Australia, only came to the US market about a year and a half ago. They tried, of course, to run US sales from Australia. The time zone differences. It's a killer and it just didn't work. He actually moved here a year and a half ago. He moved to Austin, Texas, where I am and started building out the US business. But now that I'm inside, we are not going to pick a lane because this resonates with every vertical. So again, we've got corporate clients, we have associations, and then we have contracts with local, state and federal government. IT mentoring works for everyone. We can and we can tailor the programs for any setting. As you can imagine, a corporate client is very different from an association client.
Deanna Shimota (00:08:42) - Right. And what kind of impact have you seen organizations that work with your company experience?
Bijay Mathew (00:08:49) - Yeah, people that run structured mentoring programs get a lot of outcomes that I think are interesting.
Bijay Mathew (00:08:55) - One is increased mobility in terms of promotion and new opportunities for people who have gone through the mentoring programs, increased collaboration internally, especially with remote and hybrid work. A structured mentoring program can create connections across departments and across physical locations that otherwise wouldn't be there. And the thing that resonates with me as a people leader. I spend a lot of my time trying to get people to think differently about their work, about their place in the company, about how we can, tackle various challenges and as convincing as I think I am. I'm not always successful in getting people to change the way they think. And the feedback that we get often says that mentees now think differently about their role, about their career, and how they can impact their organizations. To me, that's the gold right there is that is the impact it has on mentees. The other thing is the conventional wisdom is that mentoring is for the mentee. And of course, that's true. But one thing that we find is the mentors are often transformed by their experience.
Bijay Mathew (00:10:02) - So when you get to be at my stage of career, which is the last third of my career, and then when I do the math, I have to say maybe last half because I don't think I can retire. But you start thinking about legacy and impact, and you probably have people on your staff that are they've been there, done that right. They don't have much left to prove, but maybe their engagement is a little bit less than it used to be. And you find that they're not as active as they used to be. And after this experience, people, old people like me, will sometimes be brought to tears by their experience as a mentor. And to me, that's the kind of the secret of this is that it's not just for the mentees that that mentors get transformed and all of a sudden they're re-engaged at work and they have a new lease on their work life. So.
Deanna Shimota (00:10:47) - Yeah, that's a really cool way to look at it because yes, everyone that's involved, you're not just imparting your wisdom.
Deanna Shimota (00:10:54) - The learning goes both ways, and the rewards from it can go both ways for sure.
Bijay Mathew (00:10:59) - Absolutely.
Deanna Shimota (00:11:01) - So what is the future vision for Art of Mentoring?
Bijay Mathew (00:11:05) - We want to impact as many people as we can, and I think this is a reflection on the humility we have, is we don't do a great job of talking about how many programs we've implemented, how many mentor and mentees that we've that we've touched through our programs. So that's one thing we're going to start doing is talking up the success a little bit more, sharing some of those, some of the feedback we get from people. So one thing that we do that also separates us as we this is a cohort based. It's a shared experience that the people are going through together. So we have a kickoff meeting. We have mid program check ins that are separate for mentors and mentees, and then we wrap at the end and the testimonials we get from those wrap meetings. We're going to start sharing more broadly so people can really understand the ROI.
Deanna Shimota (00:11:54) - Very cool. As you think about organizations that are out there looking at their options, like you mentioned, there are a lot of different mentoring platforms and solutions out there for organizations to consider. What are some of the things that someone purchasing this type of technology should take into consideration as they evaluate those options?
Bijay Mathew (00:12:17) - Yeah. I think it's really important that you think about the impact of the program and the design of the program, because software, there are so many in this space that that the software part can be a commodity. Right. If all you want is some widget that does things, there's a lot of them out there. But for us, we spend a lot of time with the client working on the design of the program, because figuring out who the right mentors are, figuring out the right mentee profile, what's the structure? We're very flexible. We have programs that are as short as two months. We have programs that are a year long. The sweet spot tends to be 6 to 8 months.
Bijay Mathew (00:12:55) - I'm aware of programs that run for three years, so it just depends on the need of that org and how you design it. So I think that's probably the most important thing is spending time getting the design right. Because if you don't design it, putting it on a technology platform will just make it fail harder and faster.
Deanna Shimota (00:13:16) - What are some of the biggest hesitations that you see companies have when they're implementing a solution, like Art of Mentoring?
Bijay Mathew (00:13:24) - I think the recruitment of mentors and mentees, I think is an area that people struggle with. So as you can imagine, we work with clients who have very well established programs. So for them to spin up a thousand pairs, a thousand mentees in a program in 30 days time is easy because they have a tradition and history of doing this. They have people waiting. Other clients that we have never done a structured mentoring program. So it usually takes about usually we spend about 30 days hyping it up internally, and then we keep the application period open for 2 to 4 weeks.
Bijay Mathew (00:13:57) - I think the thing that helps overcome that reluctance is we've done this hundreds of times. We have a recruitment kit that we share with them. When we partner with them on how do we get, how do we figure out who the right population is, how do we target them, how do we get them into the program and then keep that satisfaction level high? All of our pairings aren't perfect, so we don't have a 100% satisfaction rating, but our satisfaction rating tends to be 90 plus percent. And every once in a while you can get a bad match. But we can identify them quickly and and quickly change them. It's usually not a personality conflict, but rather some other structural conflict through through the matching algorithm. We do try to think about that, especially when it comes to time zone. So if you don't have a super interesting social calendar like me, then maybe you don't mind meeting with your mentee at 7 p.m. at night. But most people, they try to keep it within the confines of the normal workday.
Deanna Shimota (00:14:54) - For the organizations that have established programs. When you can come in, I can see where the culture is already there, so people are more likely to raise their hand and say, I want to be a part of this, whether they're a mentor or a mentee. For those organizations that are doing it for the very first time, how does it usually go when you go into an organization? Are those employees eager to raise their hands, or do they need a little bit of convincing before they jump in feet first?
Bijay Mathew (00:15:24) - Yeah, it's usually the case that there are a lot of people that want to be mentees, and it's the mentors that tend to be reluctant. So I think education is really important. And again, that's where that training comes in. It's a 45 minute online training. It's interesting because 100,000 people have taken that globally over the years. But it really helps you understand it's not just a talking head and slides. There's actually a video of a one on one mentoring conversation between a mentor and mentee.
Bijay Mathew (00:15:52) - And when people see that, they usually realize, oh, it's no one wants to read instructions or read a PDF, they want to go to YouTube to figure out how to do things. This is the same way. Once they watch that, they realize, oh, I've been doing this my whole adult life. I've been mentoring people. I just didn't call it mentoring and it wasn't part of a structured program. This is an easy thing for me. I think it's actually more difficult for the mentee, because we often ask them to be in charge of this relationship and kind of set the stage for what they want to get out of it. And so again, that's where their training helps them understand what is this relationship and what are the guardrails and what are the confines of it.
Deanna Shimota (00:16:32) - Yeah, that totally makes sense, because if you think about it from a mentor standpoint, I think a lot of people, they don't give themselves enough credit, right? They're like, I don't know that I could really teach somebody else anything that's really of value.
Deanna Shimota (00:16:46) - Right. And that's absolutely not true. If you have years of experience in your career, you can certainly help somebody that isn't as far along in their career. And I think as the mentee, sometimes they come in and maybe they're young and inexperienced and they're just they think they can show up and wisdom is going to be imparted to them. But I think it makes sense to have them help drive. What do you want to get out of this? And you're in control of your own destiny. You can't expect your mentor to be able to shape you and guide you to that career success.
Bijay Mathew (00:17:19) - So yeah, that's very true. And I think especially what we've been through the last few years with remote and hybrid, I work from home and my preference is to continue doing that. But I noticed when I was working, we rented some office space to do some collaboration, and I noticed there's just this thing that happens. I spent my whole life working in offices, and you learn a lot just from that daily interaction and being in that place.
Bijay Mathew (00:17:43) - And some of that's lost for some of the younger generation because of just the structural things that have happened in the past few years. And so I think this can replace some of that. And I think it's important that we acknowledge that. The other thing that I think is really interesting is we also do reverse mentoring. So that's where the less experienced person is teaching the more experienced person something. And I think those are my favorite companies because they are really forward thinking. It takes a special company to say, hey, we're going to try this. And it creates a lot of a lot of buy in from those folks. The other thing is, no matter what type of mentoring program, it is just the fact that you're investing in this, which is pretty unusual. If every company had a mentoring program, then I could be talking to you from a private island, because this is an unusual category of spend. I think it I think it lands differently than other types of employee development investment, especially for the people that aren't in it.
Bijay Mathew (00:18:41) - They're like, oh, my company is really forward thinking. They're doing this for our high potentials or for women's leadership or for we're putting all of our new hires into a year long mentoring program so that they get the lay of the land and they know where to go, and they have connections outside of their own work group. Like, that's a pretty cool thing to do.
Deanna Shimota (00:19:02) - Well, yeah, that is pretty cool. So BIJAY, what final thoughts do you want to leave our audience with?
Bijay Mathew (00:19:08) - I think this is a really important thing. We've all been through many different challenges over the last several years and we continue to go through them. Mentoring can solve real problems when it comes to retention, employee development, feeling, feeling of belonging in your company and it can change the way people think. And I think that's really important. We went through a great resignation a few years back and that was a hard thing to go through. I personally lost three people, including my best account executive was literally like ten x the average rep, and I feel like we might have that experience again.
Bijay Mathew (00:19:47) - And so anything you can do to get ahead of that. And I think mentoring plays a key role in that.
Deanna Shimota (00:19:53) - Sad. So where can our listeners go to learn more about Art of Mentoring?
Bijay Mathew (00:19:58) - You can check out our website at Art of Mentoring dot net. You can connect with me on LinkedIn BIJAY Alex. Mathew. I think I'm the only one, but I could be wrong about that. And if you go to conferences, we're going to be at Sherm and Air Tech, go to AC. The big association conference and several others. But yeah, I like talking about mentoring more than anything else I've ever sold. Happy to have conversations with anyone. And yeah, it's a great it's a great space to be in.
Deanna Shimota (00:20:29) - Excellent. That is a wrap for today's show. BIJAY, thanks so much for joining me. To our listeners, be sure to connect with BIJAY on LinkedIn and explore the Art of Mentoring by checking out their website. Thanks for listening and we'll catch you next time. Thanks for listening to this episode of the HR Tech Spotlight podcast, where we showcase some of the best up and coming HR technology options in the market.
Deanna Shimota (00:20:58) - If you are an HR tech company leader who would like to be. For a guest spot on this program. Please contact me via GrowthMode Marketing.
Deanna Shimota (00:21:07) - Or reach out to me Deanna Shimota on LinkedIn. And if you found this show informative, subscribe. Connect with us on social media and leave a review.
Deanna Shimota (00:21:17) - This is Deanna with GrowthMode Marketing signing off. Thanks for listening. We hope you'll tune in again next time.