Setting up an Engineering Mentoring Program at Trustpilot

Mentoring Engineers on the IC track

As a Staff Engineer at Trustpilot, I felt it was important to be able to help guide other engineers on their career paths by virtue of sharing past experiences and general advice that I’ve picked up along the way. The primary candidates were those on, or interested in, the Individual Contributor (IC) career track.

This led to the idea of setting up a mentoring program, whereby, engineers can sign-up for a (minimum) 6-month period and be paired with a more senior engineer to help and guide them as they go through their Trustpilot career. Aim for a “light-touch” approach…we’ve all got enough meetings on our calendars already, right?!

Background

Before kicking any program off, I consulted with peers in different companies, as well as the LeadDev Slack #continuous-learning channel to find out what has worked for others when kicking off an engineering mentoring program in their companies. Some of the key things which came back were;

• keep it simple
• use a sign-up form
• give mentor-mentee pairings at-least 6-months in-order for those relationships to be built, before potentially switching mentors

How did we set things up?

1. Initial program docs

Create some initial background documentation for program joiners to refer to before signing up.

As an engineer, why would I want a mentor?

• Career advice, things to try, things to avoid, etc…
• Help with your personal development plan.
• Feedback on ideas you’ve had.
• Networking out-with your current reporting line.
• Exposure to a wider range of projects, with longer term, broader scope.
• Increase your exposure within Trustpilot Engineering as a whole.
• General tips and advice, based on insights from experience.

As a mentor, what is expected of me?

• Give relevant examples from your own experience to help guide the mentee.
• Be prepared to talk about things that you’ve seen or experienced that perhaps didn’t work.
• Be open and honest.
• Be vulnerable.
• Help connect the mentee with the right people within Trustpilot.
• Respect confidentiality

2. See who’s interested

An initial Google sign-up form was created, this asked the following simple questions:

Name:

Title:

Team:

I am looking to:

• be a mentor
• be a mentee
• be BOTH a mentor and a mentee

As a mentor I could help with:

As a mentee I am looking for:

3. Setup a Steering Committee

A steering committee was created of 2 Staff Engineers who would be responsible for pairing mentees with mentors, as well as generally keeping the program moving, adjusting assignments where necessary and the process when required.

Also, it organises monthly checkins with all mentors to identify any common themes that mentees may be needing help with — such as; unclear career ladders or when best to fit in learning & development time into the week, etc…? Some issues can be pushed up the organisation ladder to Directors/VPs if deemed necessary by the mentors group.

4. Allocate Mentees to Mentors

The steering committee members review the completed sign-up forms and using the information in there, make a best-attempt at aligning requests — what mentees are looking for, with what mentors can offer.

Limit the number of mentees to a single mentor to 3 max.

Suggest that mentors arrange 1:1 sessions with mentees every 2-weeks as a starting point — this can vary per-pairing.

5. After 6-month (2-quarters) cycle

Send out the Google Form again, allowing for:

• new joiners to the program
• request a change in mentor
• leave the program

Repeat mentee-mentor allocation process.

How are we doing?

After 10-months of the program running, we have gone from 26 participants in the first cycle (6-months), to over 40 participants in the second cycle. General feedback from mentees has been positive and we are now also seeing the Engineering Management (EM) career track taking advantage of the experience we have gained and opening up a mentoring program for those interested in the management track.

The next mentoring review will happen in February/March 2024, so watch this space for further updates!

Trustpilot are hiring, see: https://uk.business.trustpilot.com/jobs#open-jobs for more!