The Onboarding Builder is where you design the experience your members have when they first join your program. You choose which fields appear, what order they show up in, and how those fields carry forward into member profiles and the member directory. This article walks you through how the builder works.
What the Onboarding Builder does
When a member joins your program, they work through a short onboarding flow before they can reach their dashboard. The Onboarding Builder lets you control exactly what that flow looks like.
Every field you add to the builder becomes a step your member must complete before moving on. The fields you select also become the filters available to members when they browse the mentor directory, as long as those fields are set to show on public profiles and have selectable answer options.
You configure the onboarding once. Those same fields then appear consistently on member profile pages and in your program's member directory.
The two steps of onboarding
Your onboarding is organized into two steps.
Step 1: Profile and questions. This is fully configurable by you. It includes profile fields and any segment questions you want members to answer. You control which fields appear here and in what order.
Step 2: Goals. This step is for mentees only. Mentees set their mentorship goals here. Step 2 is not configurable and always follows Step 1 for mentees.
Types of fields you can add
When you open the Onboarding Builder, you will see a panel of fields you can drag into Step 1. Each field carries a badge so you know what kind it is.
- System fields are core profile fields like name, bio, languages, pronouns, and location. These are provided by Mentorly.
- Mentorly fields are Mentorly's default segment questions, such as Industry, Hard Skills, and Soft Skills. You can edit the answer options on these fields. Hard Skills and Soft Skills are locked and cannot be removed from the builder once added, because they are always used for matching. You will see a lock icon on locked fields.
- Custom fields are the segments your team has created for your program, like Department, Tenure, or Region. You have full control over these.
To learn how to create your own custom segments, see Creating a custom segment.
Dragging fields to set the order
Live preview
The real Mentorly screen, shown with sample data. Nothing here affects your program.
Step 1: Profile and questions
Available fields
To add a field to Step 1, drag it from the available fields panel into the builder. To rearrange fields, drag them up or down within the step. The order you set here is the order members see when they complete onboarding.
Locked fields, such as Hard Skills and Soft Skills, show a lock icon. You can drag them to a different position in the list, but you cannot remove them from the onboarding entirely.
How required fields work
Every field you place in the Onboarding Builder is required. Members must answer every field in Step 1 before they can move on. If you do not want a field to be required for your members, simply do not add it to the builder.
For segment questions, you can also control which roles are required to answer. Each segment has a required setting with four options.
| Setting | What it means |
|---|---|
| Required for everyone | All members must answer this field |
| Optional for everyone | Members can skip this field |
| Optional for mentors only | Mentors can skip it; mentees must answer |
| Optional for mentees only | Mentees can skip it; mentors must answer |
One important rule: if a segment is used for matching, it is always required for both mentors and mentees. You cannot make a matching segment optional for either role. To learn more about how matching and visibility settings work, see Segment visibility and matching.
What happens when a member has not finished onboarding
If a member joins your program but has not completed their onboarding, Mentorly guides them back to finish before they can access their dashboard. This ensures your member data is complete and your matching and directory filters work as expected.
Onboarding and member profiles
The fields you configure in the Onboarding Builder are also the fields that appear when a member edits their profile later. Members do not need to fill out a separate form after onboarding. Everything stays in sync from the single configuration you set here.
Filters in the member directory
The segments you include in your onboarding automatically become available as filters in the member and mentor directory. A segment only appears as a filter if it is set to show on public profiles and has selectable answer options (for example, a single-select or multi-select type field).
This means the filters your members use to browse mentors reflect the specific fields that matter to your program, not a generic default list.