Does mentoring matter? Key learnings from WWCode’s London Mentorship Programme

We all know that having a mentor is very important for a person’s career and there are multiple pieces of research supporting this (a research example, some fascinating numbers around mentorship). We know that mentorship can help you to navigate different career paths, break glass ceilings, overcome all sorts of career obstacles, and provide necessary support, which is much needed for beginners and which remains important through your career path. It’s very beneficial to the mentoring party, as well. You can see how far you’ve come, give back to the community, learn something new and through explaining, discussing, and having your mentee share their perspective, get a fresh look at routine things.

It seems to be a great idea all around, but how do you find a mentor/mentee? How do you make sure you have a compatible experience? And the most dreadful for a lot of people:  how do you write that introduction email asking if they are interested in mentorship? That’s why we thought it would be a good idea to create a mentorship programme for Women Who Code London.

We – several WWC London volunteers –  me, Helen, and Irina, created the shape of the programme over multiple discussions at the beginning of 2021. We decided to start the project with a presentation and a panel discussion about mentorship. The goal of this discussion was to ask experienced mentors some common questions to explain how mentorship works, introduce more people to it, give some useful tips on how to plan mentoring sessions and set goals, and define what mentorship is and what it isn’t. This event was very successful and people were immediately interested in the project. (Recording  here) Overall, we had around 110 people express their interest in the programme – and the hardest part had started – the matching process.

We were matching people according to their area of interest, programming languages they used, and other requirements they specified in the sign-up form. Even though we put a lot of thought into making the forms clear and efficient, of course, there were new findings along the way. The amount of data to process in order to make a match was quite large at times and a lot of people had unique needs, so it was particularly hard to match them. Nevertheless, despite all these challenges, we managed to create ~50 matches (some mentors were taking multiple mentees) and, unfortunately, there were people that we weren’t able to match.

Insights into the programme: 

Even though the programme is not over yet, we’ve asked participants to provide some feedback and most of it was strongly positive. 64% of them rated their experience as 5/5 and 30% as 4/5, the rest rated as 3/5.

* How satisfied with the sessions are you? (5 – very satisfied, 1 – not at all)

Almost all of the participants said that they intend to continue their sessions as seen on the chart.

”Are you planning to continue meeting with your mentor/mentee?”

With the consent of the participants, I would like to share some quotes from mentors: 

“I have really enjoyed mentoring for the first time. It has helped to build my confidence and feel a sense of achievement and fulfillment in helping someone who is early on in their career. I have learned a lot by reflecting on my own career and sharing my experiences. I have also learned many new things from my mentee that have been of benefit to me in my current role. Thank you WWC London for organizing this valuable opportunity.”

“Mentoring helps me to step back and see my own experience in a different way. This helps me to discover real value and impact which my work had, and I get to help my mentee with his own challenges, which is very fulfilling.”

And from mentees: 

“Nassim is a mega super amazing mentor! 😀 She always gives me great advice about tools and ways to approach my learning journey better 

Thank you so much, WWCode London for this incredible opportunity. You're helping me to make my dream of becoming a Data Professional comes true <3 “

“It's been a perfect match! My mentor is studying the same field as I am for my master's project, so she's been super helpful pointing me in the right direction”

“The program has helped me get a sense of direction for my career and ways I can achieve that. It’s great to chat with someone that has been through this”

Key findings

To be honest, reading the feedback was truly rewarding and I’m very happy we’ve started this project. It appears that the answer to the question “Does mentoring matter?” is a strong “yes”. To other WWCode communities or anyone else planning to start their own mentorship project, here are some key findings that I compiled from the experience of organizing and managing this “season” of the Women Who Code London Mentorship Program:

What works well: 

• Setting up a kick-off event was a great idea, it seems to have clarified a lot of things about mentorship for potential participants 

• Having a landing page with all the information in one place was helpful

• Automations. Surprise – surprise, automation should be planned beforehand, you should create your forms and questions with automation in mind. Also, automating sending communications seems to be very useful – thanks to Irina, we had that part covered at some point. 

• Matching people with similar experience, not just by language/field of work. We’ve had some positive feedback from matches where both mentor and mentee are coming from a non-technical background or have studied a similar subject in University, even though the programming language they know/use didn’t match.

What we will improve next time: 

• More automation :). We want to be able to suggest matches in a faster way

• More support for starting sessions and on how to guide sessions for the best outcome. Even though we had our dedicated slack channel and were distributing some materials, we could have organized more meetings for mentors/mentees or some dedicated spaces for questions. 

Summing up 

One of the most impressive things about the project is that all this has been created by volunteers, passionate about what they do, and it’s truly inspiring. I want to thank all the people involved in the project – Helen and Irina, all of the wonderful mentors for their contributions, and mentees for participating. I believe that projects like this help to form a community of women engineers supporting each other. And of course a big ‘thank you to Women Who Code London for providing the platform.

Even though the programme is not over yet, we are already planning our next “season” in the fall. So, if you are interested in mentoring or finding a mentor – feel free to subscribe to our social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) and join our slack workspace to receive updates. Stay tuned for more!

Best regards, 

Mary and Women Who Code London