Social capital – upskilling, mentoring, community

As people working in education, there are many ways we can describe the outcomes we are trying to achieve – from widening opportunities, to creating critical thinkers, to preparing global citizens, and everything else in between.

One objective I hadn’t thought of before was creating social capital. But when I worked recently with a coach and former PwC partner, who was doing a deep dive into EvolveCareers, he told me that our USP, our differentiator, was that we were helping students develop social capital.

He said that a dearth of social capital was one of the big things he saw holding students back – a lack of access to networks, opportunities and confidence, which meant they were struggling to access the right jobs.

This has the knock-on effect that employers aren’t getting access to talent from diverse backgrounds, and they keep getting students cut from the same, social capital-rich, cloth.

This got me thinking: when we say “social capital”, what do we mean? It’s one of those terms that means many things to different people.

According to the consultancy firm McKinsey, it’s “the presence of networks, relationships, shared norms, and trust among individuals, teams and business leaders – the glue that holds organisations together”.

It is often seen in the context of securing jobs, as Adler and Kwon say: “The folk wisdom that more people get their jobs from whom they know, rather than what they know, turns out to be true.”

In the context of a rapidly changing work environment, with the World Economic Forum reporting that 50 per cent of employees need to reskill or upskill, and 90 per cent of us will need to do so by 2030, it’s clearly important.

The Chartered Management Institute has reported that 80 per cent of employers believe graduates lack the work-ready skills needed when they arrive in their first job. Our response to this as educators is critical.

A critical part of building social capital is having the right mentors to guide and support you within a role or organisation, and this is widely recognised in the workforce.

Forbes reports that 76 per cent of people think mentors are important, but only 37 per cent have one. Employees who received mentoring were promoted five times more often than people who didn’t have mentors, and mentors themselves were six times more likely to have been promoted. And Gen Z graduates see mentoring as crucial to their success.

Mentoring programmes have been found to boost minority representation at management level and to dramatically improve promotion and retention rates for minorities and women – 15 per cent to 38 per cent compared with non-mentored employees.

But how do you get a mentor? If you lack the social capital, where do you start?

Of course, students have their universities’ alumni networks, and some of these are huge. Just imagine being able to tap into the Penn State Alumni Association of 616,000. Or Michigan’s 575,000 living degree holders in 177 countries.

But as a student or recent graduate, how can you access the mentoring social capital in networks in a structured, scaleable, accessible way?

One way is through the alumni mentoring platform, EvolveCareers Connect – powered by TEX. An AI-powered skills engine connects people within an online community based on skill development need. Reciprocity in all it’s simplistic beauty, but for an AI age.

For a current community of 200 female STEM students across six countries in Asia, we’ve connected them to 100 mentors from AWS, Cisco and Microsoft. Some 70 per cent of the students now have at least one mentor, 98 per cent say it has helped them explore new career opportunities, and 92 per cent say it’s helped them learn new skills.

Another option is creating an alumni network to offer work-shadowing experiences for students.

As educators, it is part of our role to give all our students the opportunity to have the best people around them at every stage of their journey, from school to college to career. To enable them to develop the social capital to thrive and grow and succeed.