Help with your application for Co-Pilot mentees
Advice and guidance to help you with your application
We want to help you unlock the full potential of Co-Pilot: the Musicians’ Mentoring Network, so we’ve put together some handy tips on what we look for in standout applications.
Understanding exactly what we’re looking for in an application should give you the best possible chance of writing a successful application.
- In this question, we want to understand your career as a musician so far. Try to include a clear timeline of your work to-date.
- It’s helpful if you can include some highlights from your career so far, for example: pivotal performances or collaborations, and when these took place.
- We’re also looking to see how regularly you currently work as a musician, and in what ways. If you work in multiple roles as a musician, we recommend including detail on each of the roles which make up your career.
- In this section we’re looking to understand what your career goals are for the next 12 months, and how these plans tie into your longer-term ambitions as a musician.
- Try to include as much detail as possible on how you plan to achieve your goals. It helps us to understand the steps which you plan to take in order to achieve your plans for the next year. We would recommend ensuring that you cover the who, what, where, when, why and how in your answer.
- It’s important to remember that Co-Pilot is a career development programme, so it’s helpful for us to understand what you plan to work on for the next year and why. Describe how your plans will help you build a thriving and sustainable career as a musician.
- Here we’re looking to understand why you are looking for mentoring support and the impact this could have on your career. We recommend tying this into your 12-month plan, explaining how mentoring could help you achieve your goals.
- We would like to understand why now is the right time for you to receive this support. It can be helpful to think why now, as opposed to in a year’s time, for example.
- It’s important to demonstrate an understanding of what mentoring is. Mentoring is a two-way learning opportunity where mentee and mentor should both receive positive benefits from their involvement. Co-Pilot mentors are all volunteers, and it’s important that you demonstrate realistic expectations of a mentoring relationship. Try to consider the bigger picture of what impact working with an experienced industry professional could have.
More generally, there are several things that you should keep in mind when submitting a Co-Pilot application:
- Be specific. We want to know about your career and what specific impact this support could have for you.
- Be detailed. For the Co-Pilot team to match you with a mentor we need to have a strong understanding of you as a musician so try and include as much detail as possible – use the word count.
- Remember, mentors are volunteers – we run Co-Pilot with gratitude to our volunteer mentors. It’s important that mentees demonstrate realistic expectations and mentors are not asked to share contacts, open industry doors, create opportunities or deliver services to mentees.