Frequently asked questions

A place to book one-to-one mentorship. Mentors publish a profile and the hours they are free; mentees browse the directory, request a session inside those hours, and meet at the agreed time. Group sessions run separately as meetups.

Creating an account, publishing a mentor profile and requesting a session are free today. If that changes, the price will be shown before you confirm anything — you will never be charged for a session you have already booked under different terms.

Yes. Signing up sends a verification link, and an account cannot sign in until that link is used. If it never arrives, check spam first, then request another from the sign-in screen — the old link stops working as soon as a new one is issued.

Open a mentor's profile and pick a slot. You can only choose from the hours that mentor has published, the slot has to be at least fifteen minutes away, and it cannot overlap a session they already have. Whoever confirms first takes the slot.

A booking is a request until the mentor accepts it. They see it on their dashboard and can accept or decline; you are notified either way. Nothing is on anyone's calendar until it is accepted.

If the mentor has connected Google Calendar, accepting the request creates the event and the Meet link appears on the session. If they have not, there is no automatic link — most mentors leave joining instructions on the session instead, and you will see them in the same place.

A mentee can cancel up to two hours before the start time. Inside two hours, message the mentor directly. A mentor can cancel at any point and is asked to give a reason. Cancelled and completed sessions are final and cannot be reopened.

You can hold a limited number of outstanding requests at once, so a handful of unanswered requests cannot block other mentees out of a mentor's calendar. Once a request is accepted or declined it stops counting against that limit.

Apply from the become a mentor page. You will fill in a profile — headline, biography, areas of expertise — and set the hours you are available each week.

Three things gate it, and your dashboard names whichever is missing. The profile has to be approved by an administrator; it needs at least one area of expertise, or it appears in no filter; and it needs weekly availability, or there is nothing to book. Submitting a profile does not publish it.

Finchoq administrators review each profile before it goes into the directory. Approval can be withheld, and it can be withdrawn later — a profile that is unapproved simply stops appearing and stops accepting bookings.

No, but it is worth it. Connected, an accepted session is written to your calendar with a Meet link, and your existing calendar commitments are treated as busy so nobody books over them. Not connected, you handle the meeting link and the clash checking yourself.

A session is one mentor and one mentee. A meetup is one mentor and a room — a talk, a panel, an office-hours block — that many people register for.

You join the waitlist. If someone gives up their place, the next person on the list is offered it automatically and notified. Registration also closes shortly before the start, so a meetup does not take sign-ups nobody can act on.

Your account, the profile you choose to publish, and your booking history. The privacy notice lists it field by field, and the cookie notice covers what is kept in your browser.

Email support@finchoq.com from the address on the account. Sessions other people took part in are retained as a record of what was booked, with your profile detached from them.

Report it to support@finchoq.com with the session date and the name. The code of conduct sets out what is not acceptable and what happens next.