Mentors
Thank you for signing up to be a CBF Academy mentor. Here’s a little guide for how to prepare and go about the sessions.
The point of doing this is to provide an opportunity for people to expand on their coding skills from professionals in the industry, but also to provide those looking to enter the industry with an insight into what it can be like.
As a mentor, you will be supporting people at various stages on their tech journeys, these will be people who are members of CBF Academy. You get to help someone by sharing both your technical and non-technical knowledge and experience, helping them grow on their fundamentals or understand some tricky concepts.
Mentor / Mentee Pairing
For Technical Mentors: The CBF Academy team pairs technical mentors to study groups (5 students). The pairing is subject-based, hence for each course unit you have experience and availability in, you will be paired with a study group.
When you are paired, we will give you the following information about the mentees in your study group and setup a slack space in order to make contact. We will also give the mentee the same information about you.
- Name
- Email Address
For Career Mentors: We pair one career mentor to one mentee or several mentees pending your availability. You will be assigned a mentee or mentees for the duration of the course.
The following information will be given to your mentee(s):
- Name
- Email Address
Please contact your mentee(s) via email or slack, you and your mentee(s) should arrange the time for your sessions.
Your Sessions
How you conduct the sessions is up to you! As mentorship is currently done remotely, all you’ll need to do is join the hangouts/zoom link created in your calendar by Calendly.
The first session will likely be filled with introductions and discussions of expectations, but no doubt that you will both want to get coding pretty quickly. Feel free to find a plan that works for both you and your mentee.
Booking the Sessions
Once you’re matched up, you will be put in touch with your mentee via email and on slack. If you don’t receive a message within a couple of days of the pairing being allocated, please let us know.
It could be useful to set up a Calendly account, and the mentee can use this to put time in your calendar.
Once the first session is arranged, you’re good to go!
Mentoring Successfully
- Outline expectations and ground rules from the outset
- Ask the mentee their learning priorities, check that they’re on track
- Mutually set goals with your mentee
- Be clear about your contact schedule
- Hold each other accountable
The Sessions
We recommend having a regular one hour session with mentees to ensure that they remain engaged, and they know that they have a person to connect with who can give them support. These can be 121 sessions, but feel free to have two mentees in the same session if they agree.
First session guidance
These sessions are really up to you both. If you have a particular approach or mentorship style that you’d like to do, please feel free to use it. Here are some suggestions to get the ball rolling on the first session:
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Introduce yourselves - You can share information like:
- How long have you been working in your role?
- What does your role entail?
- What’s a fun fact or hobby about yourself?
- What kind of things interest you most about your job?
- Anything else you want to share about yourself!
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Establish what you’re looking to get out of these sessions - it’s important to try and work out what you want to get out of the sessions, especially the mentee.
- Try to encourage the mentee to set objectives and help them to measure the outcome
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Discuss preferred pairing styles - You might be pairing on code during these sessions, discuss how this will be done remotely - generally zoom with screen share works really well
Before the sessions
Before your sessions, the main thing to prepare is what you and the mentee will be discussing on learning on the day, but this will be something you and the mentee can discuss over slack or email.
In terms of what you could pair on, a good option would be to support the CBF Academy mentees with their demo day projects and CBF Academy homework.
Conducting your session
That is mainly up to you! As we’re conducting this program remotely, all you’ll need to do is join the Zoom link created in your calendar.
The first session will likely be filled with introductions and discussions of expectations, after this you may want to
- Discuss career progression
- Discuss approaches to learning
- Answer their technical and non-technical questions
Feel free to find a plan that works for both you and your mentee.
Cancelling sessions
Where possible, please give at least 48 hours notice before moving or cancelling your session, so that both parties have a chance to adjust their schedules