Volunteer as a professional mentor

A professional mentor is someone with a bit of industry experience. They form temporary one on one relationships with learners.

Our mentoring program is largely based on this: https://www.developermentoring.guide/introduction/about-project-thrive

We'll summarise the key points and differences here.

Who can apply?

Anyone who has more than junior-level industry experience. We are looking for professionals.

User journey

• A volunteer coordinator will pair you up with a learner or junior-level professional. This will be a one-on-one relationship. A senior mentor will be paired with a junior mentee

• The relationship will run for 12 weeks. After the 12 weeks, you are of course welcome to stay in touch however you would like to

• The mentor and mentee will be expected to meet up at least once every 2 weeks. This session will be 45 minutes to one hour long

• At the end of the 12-week period, a volunteer coordinator will gather more detailed feedback from you.

Mindsets

At Umuzi, we take noobs and we turn them into professionals. We do that by holding our learners to high standards - we expect them to work and behave like professionals. Typically, they fall short from time to time and need some coaching.

If a mentee is behaving unprofessionally, for example communicating badly, not showing up to meetings or anything like that then you might be able to help them to become more professional yourself. A lot of the time, people do unprofessional things because they just don't know any better.

That said, if there is consistent bad behaviour then we would appreciate it if you told us about it so we could deal with it.

Support from Umuzi

We will be checking in on your relationship from time to time. If you have any requests, have any problems or have any feedback you will be welcome to reach out at any time.