Mentor Guide
May 20, 2021
Tips for Mentors:
Highlights / Things that Worked:
- Being someone mentee feels comfortable using as their point of contact
- Explaining how the team works / rehiring / how to be a TA
- Suggesting different types of activities (in person / virtual)
- Asking if your mentee is going to team events
- Giving more insight on the major / answering questions (reaching out to see if they had any questions)
Mandatory Tasks for Mentors:
- Initiate contact and set up follow up meetings (without applying pressure)
- First mentor meetup should involve setting up new member's profile on github / course site
- Make sure mentee knows they can reach out to anyone, including Kris via slack DMs & if they get no response, they should reach out to you
- Discuss the difference between 5 & 10 hours + life after first semester (show them this)
- Be proactive in asking mentees if they need help with grading for the first time, etc
- Casually checking in is better than not checking in at all (don’t stress yourself out to do too much but even a short "How's everything going?" can go a long way)
Suggested Tasks for Mentors:
- Going to team events with your mentee!!!
- Make sure the relationship doesn’t feel super professional (aka plan some fun activities for you two)
- Try to plan at least one activity per semester with your mentee
- If your mentee is posting in slack, hype them up!!! (emoji reactions, boost their message, tag people etc)
- Feel free to mention / describe your friends on the team (and how you became close) so your mentee can get familiar with them as well!
- Overly friend is always good (while respecting boundaries & being authentic)
Suggestions for Mentorship Lead:
- Give guidance on how to be a mentor
- Meetings with just mentors run by the Mentorship Lead
- Mentors should be checked in with individually throughout semester
- Giving mentors a list of activities / ideas as inspiration
Improvements (what we want to iterate on):
- Mentors should try to go to team events!!! And encourage their mentee to come!!
- Meet / message your mentor at least 3 times!
- More group activities for mentors & mentees
- A team site guide to all the tips mentors have for mentees (favorite classes, career searching, interview help, favorite profs)
- Have a written textual description of job duties for new members
Other:
- Get Kris to give a link to the duties of being a TA and add it to the team site