Version 2.5. Last updated: 2 October 2026.
You accept these terms before your profile goes live. It applies every time you mentor, wherever you are in the world.
1. What mentoring here is
1.1 mentorhero is micro-mentoring. Short, focused, virtual conversations that help someone take a step in their career.
1.2 You are here to share your experience, offer perspective, and help someone think. You are not here to fix their life, find them a job, or become their counsellor.
1.3 To mentor you need 18 months or more of work experience, gained anywhere. Being experienced is not the same as being qualified to advise on everything, and knowing the difference is part of the job.
1A. Your status
1A.1 Mentoring on mentorhero is voluntary and unpaid. It is not employment, it is not a contract of service or for services, and it does not make you our employee, worker, agent, partner or contractor.
1A.2 You gain no employment rights through mentoring here, no entitlement to pay, holiday, pension, notice or benefits, and no expectation that we will offer you any amount of mentoring or any at all.
1A.3 You are responsible for your own tax and for any declaration you need to make where you live.
1A.4 If you came through your employer, mentoring is not part of your job unless your employer says it is. Questions about your time, your pay, expenses or whether you mentor during working hours go to your employer, not to us.
1A.5 You take part as yourself. When you mentor you are not speaking for us, and you must not present yourself as an employee, spokesperson or representative of mentorhero.
2. Stay on the platform
2.1 Every conversation happens through mentorhero. Video, messages, bookings, all of it.
2.2 Do not share or ask for a personal email address, phone number, social media handle or messaging app. Do not accept one if it is offered.
2.3 Do not arrange to meet a mentee in person, at work, at an event, or anywhere else.
2.4 Do not connect with a mentee on LinkedIn or anywhere else while the mentoring relationship is live.
2.5 This is not bureaucracy. Moving off the platform removes every protection that exists for both of you, and it is the single most common warning sign in safeguarding cases. Breaking this rule ends your access.
3. Mentees who are under 18 or vulnerable
3.1 Some mentees are under 18. Some are adults who are vulnerable because of disability, illness, care needs or circumstances.
3.2 For a mentee aged 16 or 17, you will only be matched with them if you hold a current enhanced DBS check, or the equivalent check in your country, AND you have opted in to mentoring that age group. A parent, guardian or carer is welcome to attend and is not a substitute for the check. For a vulnerable adult, either the check or an accompanying adult applies. The platform enforces all of this. Do not try to work around it.
3.2A You choose your age range when you onboard: 16 and 17 year olds, or 18 and over only. You can change it at any time. If you have not opted in, you will never be offered a booking with a 16 or 17 year old, whatever your check says.
3.3 If an accompanying adult leaves partway through, end the session. Do not continue.
3.4 If a mentee tells you they are younger than their profile says, stop and report it immediately.
4. How to behave in a session
Do - Turn up on time, prepared, in a private space - Keep it about their career, their goals and their next step - Be honest about the limits of what you know - Treat everything they tell you as private, other than a safeguarding concern - End the session on time
Do not - Give mental health, medical, legal or regulated financial advice, unless you are professionally qualified and acting within that qualification - Discuss your own or their personal relationships, or anything sexual - Comment on their appearance - Offer money, gifts, favours, or promise a job or an introduction to one - Ask them for anything, including a favour, a referral, a review or a follow on social media - Record, screenshot or photograph a session - Drink alcohol or be under the influence of anything during a session - Recruit for a vacancy, sell anything, or promote a political or religious position. Passing on a CV because your mentee asked you to, under 7.5, is not recruiting
5. If a mentee tells you something worrying
5.1 It happens. Someone may tell you they are being hurt, that they are unsafe, or that they are thinking about harming themselves.
5.2 What to do:
- Listen. Do not interrogate, do not investigate, do not try to fix it
- Do not promise to keep it secret. Say that you have to pass it on to someone whose job it is to help
- Do not contact their family, their employer, or anyone else about it
- End the session appropriately. Do not cut them off mid-sentence, but do not stay on trying to counsel them
- Report it the same day through the in-app report button or to safeguarding@mentorhero.com
- If someone is in immediate danger, call your local emergency services first
5.3 Write down what was actually said, in their words, as soon as you can. Not your interpretation of it.
5.4 You are never the person who decides whether a concern is serious enough to report. Report it and let the safeguarding lead decide.
6. If something feels wrong about a mentee's behaviour
6.1 Mentees are held to the Community Standards too. If someone is abusive, asks you for money, behaves inappropriately, or pushes to move the conversation off the platform, end the session and report it.
6.2 You will not be penalised for ending a session that felt wrong.
7. Confidentiality
7.1 What a mentee tells you stays between you, the platform and, where necessary, the safeguarding lead.
7.2 Do not repeat it to colleagues, do not post about it, and do not use identifying details in a talk, a post or a case study.
7.3 You may share that you mentor with mentorhero. You may not share who you mentor or what they told you.
7.4 Your mentee's CV. You may download or print a mentee's CV to prepare for and run your sessions with them. Keep any copy secure and do not show it to anyone else. Once your session is over, delete any downloaded copy and shred or otherwise securely destroy any printed one. Keep a copy only if your mentee has said in writing on mentorhero that you may, and then only for as long as they agreed.
7.5 Passing a CV on, only when your mentee asks. If a mentee aged 18 or over asks you to pass their CV to someone who might be able to help them, such as a hiring manager or recruiter at your organisation, you may do so once they have confirmed in writing on mentorhero who it can go to. Share it only with those people and only for that purpose. Do not suggest it yourself, and do not promise anything: passing a CV on is not a job, an interview or an introduction you can guarantee. If they change their mind, stop, and ask the people you shared it with to delete it. Never pass on the CV of a mentee under 18.
8. Your employer, your profile, your data
8.1 If you came through your employer, you are still mentoring as yourself. You represent your employer's participation, and you follow their policies as well as these terms.
8.2 Your account is yours. Section 8C sets out what that means in full.
8.3 Keep your profile accurate. Do not overstate your experience, your role or your qualifications.
8.4 Sessions may be recorded for safeguarding, quality and training. Messages are monitored for signs of harm, including attempts to move off the platform. 8.4A Join from somewhere private where you can. If anyone else may be seen or heard during your session, such as someone you live or work with, tell them before it starts that sessions are recorded, and keep them out of it where you can.
8A. Advice, competence and insurance
8A.1 You share your experience and your perspective. Mentees are told, clearly and repeatedly, that mentoring is not professional advice and that decisions they take afterwards are their own.
8A.2 Stay inside what you actually know. If a question needs a professional, say so and point them to one. Giving advice outside your competence, or outside a qualification you hold, is your own risk and not ours.
8A.3 We do not insure you for the advice you give. If you hold a professional qualification and mentor within it, check whether your own professional indemnity cover applies.
8A.4 We are not responsible for what a mentee does with what you tell them, and you are not responsible for their outcome either. That is why the boundaries in these terms matter.
8A.5 Our liability to you. Mentoring here is voluntary and unpaid, and the platform is free to you. Our total liability to you for anything connected with it is limited to £100. This does not apply to death or personal injury caused by our negligence, to fraud, or to anything else the law does not let us limit, and it does not affect any right you have as a consumer where you live. Mentee Terms 11C.5 states the same cap to a mentee, and it is one cap of £100 rather than a separate one for each of you.
8B. Telling us if something changes
8B.1 You must tell us straight away if any of the following happens, whether it relates to mentoring or not:
- you are arrested, charged, cautioned or convicted of a criminal offence
- you become subject to a police or safeguarding investigation
- you are barred, or become subject to a DBS or equivalent barring decision
- you are sanctioned, suspended or struck off by a professional body
- you are dismissed or disciplined by an employer on conduct grounds
- you are subject to a safeguarding allegation anywhere, including outside work
8B.2 Telling us is not an admission of anything, and it does not automatically end your mentoring. Not telling us does.
8B.3 Everything you tell us in your profile and in a declaration must be true and kept current. A false or incomplete declaration means immediate removal, and where the law requires it, a referral.
8C. Your account is yours
8C.1 You sign up as an individual, not on behalf of your employer, your university or any other organisation. Your account belongs to you and stays with you if you change jobs, graduate or leave the organisation you joined through.
8C.2 If you registered with a work email address, add a personal email as your backup so you do not lose access when that work address stops working.
8C.3 When your organisation's partnership with us ends, or you leave that organisation, you keep your account, your profile and your mentoring history. You lose access to anything belonging to that organisation, including its program, its reporting and its branded content. Your organisation cannot ask us to delete your account, because the account is not theirs.
8D. Claims between you and your mentee
8D.1 Clause 8A.4 says neither of you is responsible for the other's outcome. This section is what that means if it ever goes wrong.
8D.2 Your mentee agrees not to claim against you for the guidance itself. They accept this in Mentee Terms 11E, in the same terms as this section. Where you mentor in good faith and within these terms, they agree not to bring a claim against you personally for the guidance you gave, for an opinion you offered, or for a decision they took afterwards. You give them the same protection: you agree not to claim against them for anything they told you in a session.
8D.3 What this does not cover. It does not cover harm, abuse, harassment, discrimination, dishonesty or anything sexual. It does not cover a breach of confidence, the misuse of something either of you shared, or anything either of you does off the platform. It does not cover advice you gave while holding yourself out as professionally qualified and advising within that qualification, because that is not mentoring. And it never covers death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud, or anything else the law does not let us exclude.
8D.4 It does not stop either of you reporting anything, ever. This clause is about claims for money and nothing else. Neither of you loses any right to report a concern to us, to the police, to a regulator or to a safeguarding authority, and section 5 still requires you to report one.
8D.5 This protection depends on you staying inside these terms. It is not a substitute for 8A.2, and 8A.3 still stands: we do not insure you. If you advise outside your competence, or outside a qualification you hold, 8D.2 does not reach it.
9. Reliability
9.1 If you cannot make a session, cancel through the platform with as much notice as you can.
9.2 Repeatedly missing sessions without notice may lead to a warning, suspension or removal. Mentees are often taking a chance on this, and a no-show costs them more than it costs you.
10. If you break these terms
10.1 Depending on what happened, we may talk to you, issue a warning, add conditions, suspend you, or remove you permanently.
10.2 Serious breaches mean immediate removal without warning. That includes contact outside the platform, anything sexual, grooming behaviour, dishonesty about who you are, and anything that puts a mentee at risk.
10.3 Where the law requires it, we refer to the police, a safeguarding authority or the DBS.
10.4 Suspension is a neutral step while something is reviewed. It is not a finding against you.
10.5 We decide who mentors on this platform. Our decision is final, and we are not obliged to share every detail of our reasoning.
11. Looking after yourself
11.1 Mentoring can be heavy. If a conversation stays with you, talk to us at support@mentorhero.com.
11.2 You are allowed to say you do not know. You are allowed to end a session. You are allowed to step back from mentoring at any time.
These terms sit alongside our Community Standards, Safeguarding Policy and Privacy Policy.