Human Resources: Group Mentoring Support Now Available in Mentor Scout

CHICAGO- ASTD Conference- (May 17, 2010) < In a major expansion of its
widely adopted Web-based mentor/mentee matching and administration platform
for corporate mentoring programs, Mentor Scout today announced the addition
of a new suite of tools designed to nurture group mentoring initiatives. The
Mentor Scout upgrade features new self-service tools to facilitate mentoring
group formation and communication as well as administrator enhancements for
group oversight, expanding the spectrum of mentoring activities that can be
managed with the software.

³Group mentoring can be challenging to organize and manage because there are
so many moving parts scattered across the organization. Yet it is a widely
adopted mentoring strategy that is growing as organizations seek alternative
models for skills and career development and knowledge transfer,² said
Mentor Scout President Bruce H. Daly. ³Our expanded Mentor Scout platform
automates many of the day-to-day networking, scheduling and administrative
processes to help these programs succeed.²

The new group mentoring tools that have been added to Mentor Scout being
introduced in Booth #1802 at the ASTD 2010 conference that opens today in
Chicago include:

· Pre-defined mentoring group types that can be loaded onto the system as
part of the account setup to enable employees to quickly locate groups of
interest and connect with others with common needs.
· Support for ad hoc group creation, either by the mentoring program
administrator or participants themselves, including searches of mentor and
mentee profiles to expedite group formation.
· A group workspace with designated areas for group discussions, Q&As, group
event notices, project postings and document uploads, expediting interaction
and collaboration among group participants.
· Group administration control and moderation within the administrative
console to aid program monitoring and evaluation.

Mentor Scout¹s new group mentoring features can support one or more mentors
for multiple mentees as well as any kind of mentoring objective from
employee skills and career development (presentation skills, budgeting, time
management, proposal writing, career path direction, etc.) to improvement of
supervisory and/or mentor skills.

Other enhancements include improved search capabilities with new name lookup
and keyword search options, and expanded mentor/mentee profile options
including photo, signature quote, projects in process, favorites and
blog/scrapbook to assist in mentor/mentee matching and relationship
building.

The new features extend the functionality of Mentor Scout, a self-service
mentor/mentee matchmaking and administrative platform used for general
mentoring programs as well as those designed for specialty diversity groups,
high potential employees, new hires and/or new supervisors. Prospective
mentors and mentees complete profiles about their backgrounds or interests
and then search for matches by any group of parameters, eliminating
time-consuming manual matching by a mentoring program director.

The software also includes a secure space for mentorship communication and
goal-setting, a storage function for all program documents, and reporting
tools for measuring program participation and successful matches. The
program has facilitated hundreds of mentorships for organizations from Best
Buy and Home Depot to General Mills and the Magazine Publishers of America.

Mentor Scout is available immediately under the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
delivery model at www.mentorscout.com <http://www.mentorscout.com> .

About Mentor Scout
Mentor Scout develops Web-based software that facilitates mentoring-related
talent development, knowledge transfer and collaborative interaction in
large companies. Mentor Scout Standard Edition provides a full matchmaking
and administration system for corporate and organizational mentoring
programs. Mentor Scout Talent Networking Edition adds social networking
tools designed to help engage, nurture and retain Generation Y employees.
Customers include organizations such as The Women's Alliance at Xerox,
Excellus BlueCross Blue Shield, and Hamilton Sundstrand, a division of
United Technologies. The company is a division of Nobscot Corporation, the
pioneer in exit interview management software. For more information, visit
http://www.mentorscout.com <http://www.mentorscout.com> .