Mentorship: An Underrated Strategy for Work Readiness
On 17 August I opened Day 1 of the NWU Career Services Work Readiness & Entrepreneurship Webinar Series 2026 — themed “Work Readiness: Back-to-Basics” — with an argument I think we too often skip past. Mentorship is one of the most powerful tools we have for work readiness, and one of the most consistently undervalued. Here is the case I made. Watch a video about my presentation at the following link: https://vimeo.com/1218978593
A degree no longer converts to a job
We like to tell young people that a qualification opens doors. The numbers make that promise harder to keep. In South Africa, the national unemployment rate sat at 33.6% in the second quarter of 2026. Among youth aged 15–24 it was 60.9%, and among those aged 25–34 it was 40.6%.
The crisis, though, is not only about producing graduates. It is about the transition — the move from graduate to employed professional. Many of our students earn the qualification and still stall at the point of converting it into sustainable work. That transition gap is exactly where mentorship operates, and it is the reason “back-to-basics” has to include the relationships that carry people across it.
The question we should be asking
The familiar question is, “What will you do with that?” But graduates do find work. Whether a degree “leads to a job” was never the real issue. The better question is: under what conditions do graduates convert their education into sustainable, flourishing work?
Sustainable employability depends far less on the degree itself than on the conditions that let graduates turn the resources they already have — critical thinking, ethical reasoning, relational intelligence — into realised capabilities. Having the resource is not the same as being able to use it. Mentorship is one of the few interventions that acts directly on that conversion.
The argument in one sentence
Mentorship is underrated not because the evidence is weak, but because it is judged by its weakest implementations. Done well, it benefits mentor and mentee alike, and its benefits scale directly with how deliberately it is designed. The bridge only becomes useful when it is deliberately built.
What the evidence actually says
The systematic reviews are clear on three points. First, mentorship builds professional and relational capabilities — confidence, professional identity, adaptability, and career skills. Second, employment outcomes depend on context: social capital, credible networks, access to information, and institutional support. Third, mentorship supports development but it cannot replace structural change. It opens doors; it does not, on its own, dismantle unequal systems.
The case studies reinforce this. In embedded employability programmes, around 80% of students reported improved self-awareness and roughly 70% of mentees showed gains in career confidence. Alumni mentors, in particular, bring something that is hard to manufacture: emotional credibility. They have walked the same path, in the same context, and that shared experience lands differently than generic advice. Mentorship works best not as a bolt-on, but as part of a whole-university approach to employability.
And a necessary caution: done badly, mentorship can backfire. Poorly implemented programmes can have adverse effects, especially on vulnerable young people. Mentorship is not automatically good. Design is the whole game.
Why alumni mentors have a distinctive edge
Five advantages set alumni apart. They offer credible role-modelling through shared context and lived experience. They form a bridge to the workplace, turning the abstraction of a degree into workplace reality. They surface hidden opportunities — the jobs that are never advertised. They rebuild confidence and agency, which is often the real antidote to imposter syndrome. And the relationship carries mutual benefit: mentors sharpen their own leadership as they give.
You cannot pour from an empty cup
We ask a lot of mentors, and we should be honest that commitment alone is not enough. Even committed mentors need the right conditions to mentor well. Overload steals the freedom to do it properly. And when mentors absorb their mentees’ difficulties with nowhere to put it, their own recovery suffers. If we want strong mentoring, we have to resource the mentors too.
Think upstream
There is an old parable about rescuers pulling one drowning person after another out of a river — until someone finally walks upstream to find out who keeps pushing people in. Mentoring can fall into the same trap: endlessly rescuing at the bottom. The upstream question is different: what conditions are pushing mentees toward the edge in the first place? Good mentoring builds confidence and agency, creates safety and recognition, and removes barriers before people fall. It should prevent the fall, not only call the ambulance.
This is where the capability approach earns its place. In Sen and Nussbaum’s language, capabilities are what a person is able to do or be, while functionings are what they actually do or are. A resource — a bicycle, a master’s degree — is only a means. Whether it becomes real mobility, or real employability, depends on conversion factors that are personal, social, and environmental. Mentees may hold qualifications, information, and tools and still find that none of it converts into opportunity. The mentor’s job is to help build the capabilities — confidence, direction, networks, decision-making — and the freedom to turn resources into meaningful action.
Five conclusions
To pull it together:
The gap is structural — and mentorship targets it. Graduates do find work; what’s broken is the bridge from degree to job.
It’s underrated, not ineffective. Mentorship is judged by its weakest versions; done well, the evidence is strong.
Alumni mentors have a distinctive edge: shared context, a workplace bridge, hidden opportunities, and mutual benefit.
Work upstream and build capabilities — create the conditions that turn graduates’ resources into realised capabilities.
Design decides the outcome. Match, meet often, train, and monitor — and offer both career and psychosocial support.
Mentorship works when it is deliberate, supported, and sustained. If we want it to be a serious strategy for work readiness, we have to stop treating it as a nice-to-have and start building the bridge on purpose.
