Building a Mentorship Program

on YouTube ↗25m

" summary

Builds a company mentorship program at Root Insurance by surveying volunteers, recruiting mentors first, then mentees, and matching by experience and stated topics. Results: 33 mentors, 41 mentees, a transparent matching algorithm, and an explicit policy that either side can end a pairing. After six weeks a survey gets ~60% responses and about half met three or more times. Low overhead, a few logistical re-matches, and some clear career progress anecdotes.

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" chapters (26)

1. 0:00Intro
2. 2:10High level overview
3. 2:30But I think that I might have some thoughts that might help you
4. 2:42Why a mentorship program?
5. 3:23A relatively new engineering team that doesn't have experience moving people forward
6. 3:58Some team leads mentioned informal mentorship arrangements
7. 4:13There's some evidence that a mentor relationship is good for both sides
8. 4:37A low cost / high benefit way to improve Root career growth
9. 5:29How do you start a mentorship program?
10. 6:03Program Goals
11. 6:32The mentee should have the primary role in managing the relationship
12. 7:07Give mentors a chance to learn and improve communication skills
13. 10:28Ask for volunteer mentors
14. 11:29Ask for volunteer mentees
15. 12:36I also gave mentees the option of selecting up to 3 specific mentors.
16. 14:06If you did not give a choice, you were paired with an available mentor
17. 14:26Assigning to unchosen mentors
18. 14:47Try to give people mentors closer in level
19. 17:52And I set up a slack channel
20. 18:23What happened
21. 20:14At the six week mark, I surveyed the teams
22. 21:11Even at the most pessimistic reading, about half the groups were meeting regularly
23. 22:22I've been reluctant to throw another survey at people
24. 22:52Takeaways
25. 23:10Think about the goals of the program and what success looks like
26. 23:34Mentorship is an effective way to help team growth

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