The idea of being a mentor or a mentee can be daunting. Most of us aren’t taught how to be mentor/mentee. That being said, this guide is comprised of tips and advice on how to get the most out of a mentorship; either as a mentor or a mentee.

What does it really mean to be a mentee? Does this mean you have to meet with your mentor consistently? What kind of questions can you ask your mentor? Here are some tips and suggestions on how you can grow from your mentorship. You don’t need to take all of these suggestions, but instead, they should help you figure out what you may want from your mentorship to meet your goals in school and in tech.

*CS = Computer Science

*UI/UX = User Interface/User Experience

tl;dr

• Be yourself; you don’t have to prove yourself to your mentor or anyone else.
• Be honest and don’t hold back or assume anything. You will benefit the most from your mentorship if you ask those “dumb” questions.
• Get ready to be proactive! This is also an opportunity to practice consistent communication. More tips on this down below.

Sections

• General
• Meeting Up
• Questions To Ask

General

• Think about what you hope to gain from this mentorship. You might be able to think about some clear needs from your mentor, but if you don’t know where to start, begin by asking questions you have about CS.
• Here’re some general topics you can ask your mentor
  • Classes that match your interest (in and outside of the CS/Math Department)
  • How to form good relationships with professors and other students
  • Getting involved with tech outside of school
    • Conferences, workshops, and community events
    • Community service, teaching code, public outreach events
  • Ways to become better at programming, problem solving, finishing projects
  • How to find internships, acing those interviews, connecting with companies
  • Doing research on/off campus
  • Exploring subfields in computer science (e.g. UX/UI Design, Security, Web Development, Embedded Engineering)
• Try your best to find someone who can relate to. Having similar tech interest doesn’t just a compatible mentor. Sharing an identity/background goes a far way in the tech community.

• Once you found a mentor you connect with, the best thing you can do is to stay in consistent contact with them. Whether it’s meeting once a week, once a month, or catching up at least once a semester, you are able to reflect on your mentor and your own growth over time.

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Meeting Up

• Before you meet with your mentor, send an introduction to them. This could simply be sending dates for a coffee chat or a blurb of what you hope to learn from them. It greatly helps to send a couple questions you may already have so during your meet up, your mentor has an idea of what you may need advice in.
• During your meetup, it’s helpful to have some ideas (even better, questions) of what you want to discuss with your mentor. If you have a list of questions, don’t worry about trying to cover everything you wanted to in the inital meeting.
• Your mentorship should be a judgement-free zone. That being said, don’t hold back on not knowing everything about tech. Ask what you want to know!
• Nobody is perfect, and most times, your mentor will not be able to answer all of your questions.
  • Even if your mentor’s interests do not align with yours, you can still learn a lot from their experience in school and in the tech community. Align your questions to how your mentor can help you:

    Here’s an example: You’re deciding on attending graduate school and you’re mentor has no research experience but has done multiple internships. Ask your mentor about whether they have had to make the same decision and whether the companies from their internship experience have opporunities in research.

• Although you are a mentee, be sure to understand their goals as well.
  • Ask if they plan to stay in their current path/role when they graduate
  • If they’ve done an internship or research in the past, ask how that has change their perspective on continuing that role after college
• Though you can ask your mentor about anything in CS, it is more worthwhile to ask for your mentor’s opinion. You can find many answers to your question online (and in the resource tab!), but finding opinions on how to navigate the start of your career path is valuable. This is also a great time to ask your mentor to review your resume.
• Remember to always exchange emails, Twitter handle, or any other contact information at the end. Even if you didn’t feel any connection with your mentor, they can still serve as a point of reference to you at your college and in your career.

• After your meeting, send an email of thanks and any follow up questions, even if it’s weeks later. However, the sooner, the better :)

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Questions to Ask

• Technical:
  • Where do I look for internship oppotunities?
  • Where can I learn more about contributing to open source?
  • How do you start on a personal project?
  • Do you recommend any good websites or papers to read?
  • What are your advice to X versus Y (eg. UI/UX Design versus UX research)
  • What do you do when you get stuck on a coding problem?
  • What do you wear to interviews? Also how do you find housing for internships?

• Nontechnical:

  • What are some good classes to take?
  • What is something you wish you would’ve known your freshman year?
  • Who do you look up to in your college career?

  • How can I connect with other women in the tech community

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One of the best ways to help someone is to share your experience with them. Whether you’ve had your own mentor before or you’re doing this for the first time, it goes a long way to help someone navigate their college experience and the start of their career. Even though your role as a mentor is to advise your mentee, you can also reflect on your mentee’s experience and learn from them!

tl;dr

• You don’t need to know all the answers. Connect them with people who may know the answer.
• Be reflective and specific about what you say. Think about how your advice can be actionable on their part.
• Mentees can often feel guilty for either taking up your time or for not keeping in better touch with you. A simple email or message asking them about their classes can go a long way.

Mentor Sections

• General
• Meeting Up
• Answering Questions

General

• Listen. It’s the best thing you can do as a mentor.
• It’s common for mentees to be intimidated to ask for help in tech. A great way to show that part of being a good engineer is knowing how to get help.

  A great way to do this is debugging a problem in front of your mentees. This can be debugging buggy code or gooogling one of their questions with them.

• Be courteous and don’t share the information with others unless implied.
• Don’t make assumptions on what they know or don’t know.

  Tech is also one of those fields that has many acronyms and buzzwords. Before going into a topic, ask your mentee if they know the term. Find a balance in gauging your mentee’s knowledge and showing enthusisam in your explanation can make the topic less intimidating.

• Be concious about abstracting topics. First, give an overview, break it down into components, zoom back out, and explain how each component works again.

• Get ready to also learn from your mentee!

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Meeting Up

• Reach out first. Mentees can feel intimidated or feel guilty for taking up your time.
  • Let them know it’s okay to ask different questions. If you specialize in something, encourage them to take advantage of knowing more about your specialty.
  • Ask them if they have any goals for this sesmeter. It also helps to have them send you some of their questions before your first meeting. Not only will you have more time to answer their questions, but it will help them think about how you can help them (and vice-versa).
  • Establish what’s the best way to reach each other (e.g. Email, message, Facebook, Slack, etc.).

    Be transparent about being ghosted. Many mentees get intimidated when they don’t stay connected, and as a result, they think you’re not interested in being their mentor anymore. Letting them know that it’s okay to be disconnected, and sending you an email months later is better than never letting you know at all.

• During your meeting with your mentee, be open about your accomplishments, failures and insecurities. You want to help your mentee build confidence in their studies and in their skillset.
  • In some cases, start by asking leading questions. This can help your mentee open up to you. This could also be your chance to probe for how you can help them.
  • General things that you can do during your meeting could be talking about getting internships/jobs, classes, reviewing resumes. Being reflective can also validate your mentee’s assumptions and actions.
  • Especially in college, it’s good to discuss things outside of the formal mentorship. Personal discussions can help build trust.
  • Setting goals in the mentorship can help both of you keep account of each other’s roles. For mentees, this could be setting up a GitHub account or having a list of internships ready before your next meeting. For mentors, your goals can be looking for specific projects or events that aligns with your mentee’s interest.
  • Get to know their personalities. It’s just as important as their experience and it’s part of their identity. With care, you can ultimately help build up their confidence!
  • Discuss the next possible meeting. A mentorship is no fun when it feels like a long-term commitment. Set a soft meeting date.
• Mentees often struggle with following-up with emails. If you don’t hear back from your mentee after a few days, reach out with an email. Again, mentees can often feel intimidated.
• Some of us are taking five classes, working 20 hours a week, and don’t have time to consistently meet with our mentee. That is fine! Sending an email to follow up about their goals can go far. If you think your mentee will benefit more from consistent meetings, you may want to look for someone who can support them in that way.

• An informal way of staying in touch with your mentee could be forwarding articles or internship opportunities to your mentee.

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Answering Questions

• This is a tough one because there really isn’t any good way of answering anyone’s questions! Understand your mentee’s values and motivation. Following that, here are some things to keep in mind when answering open-ended questions:
  • Know when to give assurance and when to give actionable advice. For example, assure them that they will be able to pass a class as long as they take notes in recitation and understand the homework.
  • Sometimes we want to answer questions we aren’t qualified for. Be transparent about that and follow up with them by giving them a point of contact to someone who is qualified. More so, this can also give them assurance that you don’t need all the knowledge in the world to be good in CS!
• Mentees can sometimes go to you with all of their questions, and you won’t be doing them a favor by answering all of them. For questions that could be answered online, encourage them to do some research before coming to you. Ultimately, you want your mentee to be independent. Of course, you can offer to help them by looking for the answer together.

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• Asking leading questions
• Women Who Reign - How to reflect on your experiences
• Learn more about organizations on college campuses that empower women in tech
• How to start a tech mentorship program on campus

– A work in process. Contact me if you have a link to add!

This guide was build from the advice and suggestions from women in tech. As part of NYU’s WinC’s (Women in Computing) Mentorship Program, I received feedback from students who have been mentees and mentors themselves, members of Ladies Storm Hackathon and other women working in the tech industry as engineers, researchers, designers, managers, and recruiters. If you have something to add, you can contact me on Twitter.