Mentor Program

Our internal mentoring program

This is a new program we've built to connect people and support learning. Our set up is that Mentees share what areas they want to grow and get better at. And mentors do similarly in areas they feel they can support growth in. Here's the intake form (we want you to sign up!).

Mentees and mentors are paired for a 3 month period with support.

For more details we have a Mentor Hub that gets you everything you need to know.

Why have a mentor program?

We want our people to succeed - it's good for you, and therefore good for the company. Mentor programs are known to have great benefits to satisfaction, retention and promotions rates.

Benefits

• Being involved in a mentor program, either as a mentor or mentee, is an excellent form of professional development

• Having a mentor can increase your job satisfaction, helping with happiness

• Mentor programs are linked to higher retention rates overall, for both mentors and mentees

• Mentoring is fantastic way to share your own experiences and help your mentee grow as a consultant

• Being a mentor can help you gain more leadership and interpersonal skills, and improve your confidence in leading projects and people

• Book smart isn't always as useful as having access to someone who has experience with something you're interested in learning or developing

• People who participate in mentor programs are more likely to get promotions and/or salary increases (reference)

• Having a robust mentor program can boost minority representation at the management level, and improve promotion and retention rates for minorities and women (reference)

• PD opportunities can be very important for many people when deciding on whether to apply for a job, and having a robust mentor program can be a big indicator of how serious we are around formal PD opportunities

• Mentoring helps connecting knowledge (including technical, non-technical, and organisational), across the people within SixPivot, making organisational learning more consistent and reinforced

Inspiration for mentoring themes

Technical

• Front end (UI/UX,React, Vue, TypeScript)

• Back end (ASP.NET Core, Microservices, Azure Functions)

• Data (SQL Server, Warehousing, NoSQL)

• DevOps, cloud, and infrastructure

• Mobile

• Architecture

Consulting

• How to communicate with clients, project managers, product managers, etc.

• Setting up a project

• Build a product vision

• Define and manage project scope

• How to (safely) provide estimates

• Tracking and reporting progress and status

• Managing expectations (client, team, upstream)

• Running a project, at a technical and team leader level

• Explaining complex technical concepts simply without talking down

• Understanding operational cost

Interpersonal skills

• Leadership

• Mentoring

• Coaching

• Giving and receiving feedback

• Creating safe and inclusive spaces in your team

• Taking ownership of problems

• Dealing with depression and anxiety

• Imposter syndrome

• Neurodiversity

• Time management

• Shadowing or learning more about a project

  • Interesting tech stack, or

  • You want to see how the person doing the work approaches it

• Pair programming

• Specifically requesting code reviews

Business Skills

• Commercial awareness

• Understanding key financial levers

• How to communicate at executive level

General Skills

• Work life balance eg Juggling work, children etc

• Effective career planning

• Personal self development

• Advise from those with similar interests.., eg Music, language, exercise

• Raising your external brand

• Raising your internal brand