A guide to using Alumni Connect

Alumni, students, staff and selected friends of UWE Bristol are able to register for Alumni Connect. Registration only takes a couple of minutes.

If you're UWE Bristol alumni or a student, the system will attempt to automatically verify your registration with the information you provide, allowing you to log in to gain immediate access to the site.

Staff, friends, and occasionally some alumni and students will need to be manually verified to use the system. This can take a couple of working days, but you'll receive a notification when your verification has been approved.

Watch our short video on how to register on Alumni Connect.

By joining Alumni Connect, you'll be creating a profile on the site that will be visible to other users – who will always be either students, alumni, staff or friends of UWE Bristol. You can populate your profile with as little or as much information as you like – syncing with your own LinkedIn account if you wish to make the set-up process even quicker.

Once you have a profile on the site, you'll be able to log in and search and connect with other users, as well as making use of the online mentoring features on the site. You don't have to use these unless you want to.

You can select any password you like to log in to Alumni Connect.

Students, staff and alumni are not required or recommended to use the same password as you do for other UWE Bristol systems – such as Office 365, InfoHub or MYUWE. Similarly, if you update the password you use for these systems logins, it won't change the password you use for Alumni Connect.

If you have forgotten your Alumni Connect password, you can ask for it to be reset.

Once you've successfully logged in to Alumni Connect, you can activate your mentee profile on the 'Online mentoring' tab.

Joining as a mentee is easy and you'll immediately be able to search and browse for mentors in the 'Mentor search' under 'Online mentoring'. Whilst viewing the profile of a mentor you'd like to connect with, select 'Connect' in the 'Apply to me' box.

There's a free text box for you to introduce yourself; it's useful to tell your potential mentor why you think you might be a good match. Take a look at our top tips on how to start the conversation with a mentor. If you make a mentor request and later change your mind, you will able to use the 'retract' button to cancel it.

Watch our short video on how to find a mentor.

It's entirely up to you and your mentor or mentee how much time you spend mentoring. Some mentoring relationships will only last for a couple of messages, others may go on for much longer.

When setting up a mentor profile, it's possible to select how many mentees you can help at a time (up to five). You can choose the type of mentoring services you'd like to offer, and can also pause mentoring at any time by going to 'About' under 'Online mentoring' and clicking on 'Pause'.

Mentoring relationships should come to an end once the original objective has been achieved. However, you can set new objectives with the same mentor and continue the relationship from there.

Once you've both agreed the mentoring relationship has come to an end, the mentor should click on 'End relationship' in the 'My mentoring connections' under 'Online mentoring'.

Remember, mentors will be busy people and may not always be able to respond to your request straight away. Give them a week or so, and perhaps follow up with a polite reminder about your original request.

If you still don't receive a response, please contact us (see details in the Contact us section) and we'll investigate further for you. It may be that the mentor's contact details have changed or that they no longer wish to use Alumni Connect.

Alumni Connect is entirely free to use, and mentoring is completely voluntary. Mentors don't get paid, and should never ask for payment for their advice.

However, mentoring can be extremely beneficial to both parties involved. As well as feeling good for helping others, mentoring can help you develop your own professional skills.

Students, staff, alumni and friends of UWE Bristol can become mentors on Alumni Connect. The first time you log in, you'll be asked to do this as part of the registration process. However, it's possible to register to be a mentor at a later stage.

After your first log in, you can become an Alumni Connect mentor by clicking on 'About' and then 'Online mentoring'. Under 'Be a mentor', click 'Join'.

Unless you've updated the settings on your profile to block notifications, you'll be notified by email whenever a mentor request is made for you.

You can also view pending mentor requests under 'Online mentoring' in 'My mentoring connections'.

Don't worry! We don't expect all users to find matches straight away, or maybe even at all, on Alumni Connect.

Approaching a mentor can be daunting, so if you'd like to take the initiative and offer your expertise and support to someone directly, you can search for an appropriate mentee. Go to 'Online mentoring' and then 'Mentee search'. Any mentees listed here have indicated that they are happy to be contacted by a mentor.

If you find a suitable mentee, send them a message by clicking on the envelope icon on their profile, and ask them to send a mentor request.

Remember, Alumni Connect isn't all about mentoring. It can be a great way to find old classmates or search for new connections. We'll also update Alumni Connect with relevant alumni events and opportunities, meaning it can be a great way to keep in the loop with what's going on at UWE Bristol.

If you have first registered on Alumni Connect as a student, you'll be able to continue to use it after graduation. Your username and password will remain the same.

Please make sure you watch our how to use Alumni Connect video and read our site code of conduct to ensure you know how to make the most out of Alumni Connect safely and effectively.

Alumni Connect allows you to make online connections with others, starting online and telephone mentoring relationships. We don't recommend that you arrange to meet connections and mentors found on Alumni Connect in person without first seeking further guidance from us.

In the unlikely event that you encounter inappropriate behaviour on Alumni Connect, please flag this (using the 'Report' tab) on the site or contact us directly.

If you have already registered on Alumni Connect and would now like your profile to be removed, please email alumni@uwe.ac.uk.

If you sign up to Alumni Connect as a member of staff and then leave the University, please notify us and we can switch your account to an alumni user.

If you can't find the answer you're looking for above, please contact the Alumni Team at alumni@uwe.ac.uk.