For students
One conversation
is not a mentorship.
You can find a name. You can even get a reply. The hard part is turning that into someone who knows what you are working on and expects to hear from you again.
Free to join. You do not need to know anyone first.
Your mentorship
Example
Christopher Floyd, CFA
Head of Institutional Sales · Bondway.ai
Shared goal
Understand how a fixed-income desk is actually run
Target: June 2027
Next session
Thursday · 45 minutes
Action items
- Read how a rates desk is structured
- Write down three questions before Thursday
The problem
What usually happens.
This is not anyone failing. It is what mentorship looks like when a student has to assemble it out of parts that were never connected to each other.
Find a name
From a panel, a class list, or a friend of a friend.
Send a cold message
Rewrite it four times. Send it. Wait.
Get one coffee chat
Thirty good minutes, and no plan for minute thirty-one.
Say you will follow up
You mean it. So do they.
It goes quiet
Not because anyone lost interest.
Every step in that sequence is reasonable on its own. Nothing is holding them together, so the relationship lasts exactly as long as someone remembers to keep it alive.
How it works
The same path, held together.
Six steps, and you do not have to invent any of them.
Discover
See mentors ranked against your profile, each with the reason they are there.
Request
Say what you want to work on, and why you chose this person.
They accept
The request becomes a mentorship, with a shared space instead of an email thread.
Goals
Write down what you are working toward, and put a date on it.
Sessions
Schedule the conversation. Notes from it stay with the mentorship.
Action items
Leave with something to do. It comes back at the start of the next session.
Discover
Knowing who
to ask.
You tell Mentable what you are studying, what you are interested in and where you are trying to get to. Discover ranks mentors against that, and shows you why each one came up.
The reason matters more than the ranking. It is the difference between a name on a list and a person whose relevance to you fits in one sentence, before you have said a word to them.
Meet some of the mentorsChristopher Floyd, CFA
Head of Institutional Sales · Bondway.ai
Roughly three decades in fixed income, including Managing Director and Co-Head of Investment Grade Sales & Trading at Wells Fargo.
Why you are seeing this mentor
- Specializes in Fixed Income
- Covers Capital Markets
- University of Pennsylvania alum
Can help with
- Fixed Income
- Capital Markets
- Career Development
The request
Ask better than a cold email.
A mentor is not deciding whether to be nice to you. They are deciding whether they are the right person and whether the time will be used. Two questions give them enough to answer that.
The usual
“Hi! Would you be open to a quick chat? I would love to pick your brain.”
There is nothing in it to say yes to. The mentor cannot tell what you want, whether they are the right person, or what thirty minutes would be for.
A request on Mentable
- Why do you want to work with this mentor?
- You spent three decades in institutional fixed income and led investment grade sales and trading. That is the desk I am trying to understand before I commit to aiming at it.
- What are your goals?
- Understand how a rates desk is structured, and be able to hold a real conversation about it by spring.
Both questions are optional, and both are the whole difference. The mentor is deciding with them.
After they say yes
The introduction
is not the product.
Most of what makes mentorship work happens in the weeks between conversations, which is exactly where it usually falls apart. That is the part Mentable keeps.
Shared goals
What you are working toward, with a date on it.
Sessions
Scheduled, with notes that stay on the mentorship.
Action items
Owned by one of you, due on a day.
Messages
One thread, not a scattered email chain.
A brief
What is still open, read before you meet again.
Session one · 45 minutes
You talk. Afterwards the notes are saved on the mentorship, not in a document one of you will lose.
Action items
- Write down three questions on desk structureYou · due Thursday
- Send over the desk primerChristopher · done
Session two · opens with your brief
- Write down three questions on desk structure
- Plus the goal you two agreed on, and where you left the conversation.
Why it compounds
The fifth conversation is better than the first.
Not because the mentor tries harder. Because by then they know things about you that nobody can learn about a stranger in thirty minutes.
First conversation
- What you are studying, and roughly where you want to end up.
A few sessions in
- What you are studying, and roughly where you want to end up.
- What you actually tried, and which parts of it did not work.
Months in
- What you are studying, and roughly where you want to end up.
- What you actually tried, and which parts of it did not work.
- What you are good at, and whether they would put their name behind you.
None of that is a feature. It is what happens when the context does not reset every time the two of you speak.
The other half
Mentable is a two way word.
mentable/men-tə-bəl/adjective
Teachable. Coachable. Ready to grow.
The word describes the student, not the mentor. Being worth someone's time is a thing you can choose, and Mentable makes your side of it visible: the action items you closed are on the same record your mentor reads before you meet.
What that looks like
- Arrive with a question, not just availability.
- Do the thing you said you would do.
- Come back with what happened, including the parts that went badly.
- Say when the advice did not fit. That is worth knowing too.
You do not need to
know anyone yet.
Say what you are trying to do, and start with one person who has already done it.
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