Imagine where you could be at in your career right now if a good mentor had worked with you a year ago, or two years ago, or five years ago. Most of us believe in the power of mentoring, but the fact remains that few of us have mentors. Why is that?
Finding a good mentor is hard. Most of us find mentors by chance or luck. It takes time to discover someone and build the relationship, some degree of chemistry, and a lot of luck. Or does it?
The Mentoring Experiment
Mentoring doesn’t seem like a process that can be scaled to large numbers of people, but that’s one of the goals of our experiment. We’re going to leverage our industry experience and networks to try to match mentors and mentees on a larger scale.
How are we going to do it? We are conducting a four month cycle of mentoring between mentors we know and a series of applicants. We’re going to review the applications and match a subset of the ones we receive to a group of mentors that we’ve invited to participate.
Over the course of four months we’re going to monitor how those mentoring relationships evolve to find the answers to a lot of questions, such as:
- Are there common questions/lessons that we need to teach mentors?
- Are there common questions/lessons that mentees ask that we could convert to online lessons, making the actual conversations more productive?
- How much does chemistry matter?
In October 2011 we’re going to do a group interview with our mentors, review notes from the mentees, and then decide if there is enough value in this approach to launch a second and larger set of mentoring pairs.
If you would like to find a mentor, fill out this short application before April 30, 2011. For this first experiment (Round #1) we’re only accepting applications from IT professionals working with SQL Server. Please understand that we may not be able to match everyone with a mentor during the first round, but please submit an application if you are interested – it will help us understand the level of interest in this approach.
Steve & Andy
Would like to have better queries
Andy and Steve, Thx for doing this. To be brutally honest, the mentoring program for sqlpass has not worked for me till now. I wish you the very best in your experiment. I hope that both of you will get it working.
Hi Steve & Andy,
Nice effort this. I have been a strong proponent of mentorship and had actually written an article myself on it, at http://sreekanthragi.wordpress.com/2010/12/09/need-a-mentor-but-why/.
I wish your experimentation is successful and we have some real quality people coming out of the experiment, just as any mentor would.
Wish you loads of luck.
Cheers,
Sreekanth
Awesome initiative have been waiting for a long time for such opportunity . Thanks a lot Steve and Andy
VERY INTERESTING! I am a Senior Developer, having worked with SQL Server since version 6.5 (mid-90”s). I am currently working projects that are primarily SQL Server 2005 but have worked with 2008 (and Oracle). I am interested in that there are likely a few levels of mentoring … there are those who certainly know more and/or less than I do about SQL Server. I”d be interested in being both a mentor and mentored and was unsure if this was going to be supported? I also understand that this is for SQL Server professionals, but if you are taking down future requests
I am starting to learn Windows Phone Development (using VS 2010 Silverlight and XNA) and would definitely appreciate mentoring in that area. Good luck with this project
I have began filling out the application, however, the last question states have you read the Privacy Policy. Have I overlooked this somewhere. I have read through all of the blog posts in relation to this and do not see said policy. Please advise as I wish to submit my application.
Thank you.
Nice to see someone trying to fix the resource problem. I”ve often wondered what would happen if we could mentor some of our inner city kids on the DBA track. We have pretty significant shortage of DBAs here in the Twin Cities – it”d be nice to give the local kids a shot.
Hi,
I have been working with Merrill Lynch for 3+ years. I would like to take this opportunity to be your mentee so that I can give it back to the community.
Thanks
~Rahool
Brandon, here is the privacy policy: http://thementoringexperiment.org/index.php/privacy-policy/
Andy
Brad, we”re focusing on mentees right now, mainly to understand the level of interest. It would thrill us to expand beyond SQL, just give up a couple months to learn some lessons.
Andy
How does one volunteer to be a Mentor? What are the requirements for that?
It errored out after I filled in the application, How do I know if my submission went thru or not?
Rats! I missed the sign-up date.
Will there be another chance to participate?
I do believe all the ideas you”ve offered for your post. They are very convincing and will definitely work. Nonetheless, the posts are very short for starters. May just you please extend them a little from next time? Thanks for the post.
How did the Mentoring Experiment turn out?
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Cheers!
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Hey guys, I am interested in participating in this as a mentee but I don”t know where you”re at in terms of cycles… or if there will be another cycle. I submitted an application about a week ago. Any updates on what”s going on with the project?
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Hi, I was wondering when the next round will be. I am the only nominated SQL DBA at my company and feel that I really need so mentoring. I am supporting many SQL servers albeit low in size, but would really appreciate some mentoring to ensure I am doing things correctly… I would imagine I have a lot to learn and in the secure environment i work in help is few and far between.
Kind regards,
Adam
Steve & Andy, are there plans to do this again sometime soon? Having recently gotten a degree, and having been the “Accidental DBA” at my employer for some time, I”m beginning to realize that my lack of experience in salaried positions is hurting me. No clue on bargaining for salary / perks, etc.
Not looking for someone to train me on SQL, but career advice would help…
Jason A.
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