Understanding Program Roles

When you enroll in a MentorNeko program, you choose a role that shapes how you participate and how the AI matching engine positions you as a candidate. Understanding what each role means in practice helps you choose well and set the right expectations before your first meeting.

The Mentor Role

Mentors bring their experience to the relationship and invest in someone else's growth. If you join as a mentor, your responsibilities include:

• Showing up consistently for sessions and respecting the agreed-upon cadence
• Helping your mentee think through challenges, not just providing answers
• Coaching on goals: reviewing progress, asking probing questions, and offering perspective from your own career
• Signing the partnership agreement and contributing to its content

Mentors do not drive session agendas. The philosophy behind MentorNeko's session structure is that mentees lead; mentors respond. You may come with ideas and questions, but the mentee is responsible for bringing topics and directing where the conversation goes.

Capacity limits apply to mentors. You can hold a global limit of 1 to 3 active mentees across all programs. Within each individual program, you can also set a separate per-program slot allocation. This protects you from overcommitting and ensures the mentees you do take on receive your full attention.

The Mentee Role

Mentees drive the mentorship relationship forward. If you join as a mentee, your responsibilities include:

• Setting meaningful SMART goals in the Match Hub and keeping them updated
• Preparing for each session using the session guide and any agreed-upon preparation
• Leading the session agenda and bringing topics to discuss
• Completing sessions in the platform and providing honest feedback afterward
• Transitioning goal statuses as you make progress (Not Started, In Progress, Achieved)

The mentee-led model is intentional. When mentees own the relationship, the experience is more relevant to their actual needs, and mentors can focus on what they do best: listening, coaching, and sharing hard-won experience.

Dual Enrollment

You can hold both the Mentor and Mentee roles simultaneously. This can happen in two ways:

• Same program: If the program allows it, you can join as both a mentor and a mentee. You might be paired as a mentee with a senior colleague while also mentoring someone more junior.
• Different programs: You might be a mentee in a leadership development program while serving as a mentor in a technical skills program.

The matching engine treats each role independently. Your mentor profile and your mentee profile are evaluated separately, and you can be matched with different partners for each role.

Your global mentor capacity still applies when you hold both roles. Active mentee matches count against your mentee quota in whatever program they belong to.

How Roles Affect Matching

The AI matching engine uses your role as the starting point for candidate evaluation. A mentor profile is compared against mentee profiles, and vice versa. The dimensions the AI weights most heavily (skills, goals, seniority, department) are evaluated directionally: is this mentor's experience likely to serve this mentee's goals?

If you join as both, the AI maintains two separate candidate pools for you: one looking for a suitable mentor, one looking for a suitable mentee. You will not be matched with yourself or with someone who already holds the other role in your pairing.