The Guru-Shishya Mentorship Program
The current business environment demands that the students are not only armed with a degree in management but are also prepared with the necessary skills to succeed in the job market. As the industry and the job market in India are experiencing dramatic changes, it has become imperative for dedicated business schools to get the students prepared for the corporate challenges lying ahead, within the short period of 2 years of their study. In addition to 100% collaborative classroom learning, we also run through the Guru-Shishya Mentorship Program. This program involves a “Guru” (Mentor) and “Shishya” (Mentee).
Program Overview
The program intends to help in the transformation of the students into accountable corporate professionals. The mentoring program allows students the chance to meet professionals who share similar professional interests. The mentoring relationships will enable VBS’s management students to get support while they explore the numerous career opportunities, and also assist them as they enter the early years of their professional life.
Highlights of VBS’s Guru - Shishya Mentoring Program
- The mentoring program would be designed following the inputs of industry experts, educationists, and experienced psychologists. The program will analyze a student's skillsets (at the time of joining), and match them with an essential skill set. All this will be done by our faculty and industry experts in the network. They follow a method developed by them when evaluating a student’s skills. This initial program helps the Mentors understand their mentees’ strengths, and weaknesses, and guide them appropriately.
- The Mentor will always be an experienced corporate professional (alumni or a corporate visitor) and would be a thought leader who will help build a caring and supportive relationship with the mentee.
- The Guru-Shishya program will help us to follow up on our mission of "facilitating the overall development of a student”.
- Every mentor is assigned mentees for 2 years. It is the responsibility of a mentee to ensure he utilizes his mentor properly.
- Some areas that mentors assist students are academic exploration, appropriate decision-making, career advice, and the college to career transition.
Activities
Personality Development:
As the adage goes, 'The first impression is the best impression’, it is indeed the case in the corporate world. The first impression always matters in any business organisation. Mentors help the students to polish their communication skills, improve their body language, boost their confidence, and also hone their presentation skills.
Soft Skills Development:
Any business organisation is always keen to hire students who have a repertoire of wide knowledge, and technical skills to help see success in his job. In addition to that, employers nowadays favor candidates who share the company’s positive attitude, show a willingness to perform at difficult times, and are flexible. At VBS, we help students to acquire or develop these skills, as well as learn how to handle failures, successes, criticisms, and conflicts at the workplace.
Cognitive Reframing:
Also, known as cognitive restructuring, this technique has been used by our mentors to help the students overcome their negative thoughts, anxiety, depression, addictions, phobias, etc. Our mentors offer individual and group counseling sessions to help the students resolve their internal conflicts, and boost their growth potential.