Why did you decide to become a mentor?
I believed that already before my conversation as Full-time software engineer at Microsoft, for a 23 years old graduate, who studied in United Kingdom, had an internship at Microsoft, a return-offer as full-time Software Engineer, experience as Project manager and Software Engineer in a respective web agency and start-up, I had a enough diverse experience, skillset and backlog of failures, to have learned few important life and career lessons, that I wished to share with others, so that they could avoid the same mistakes I have done. I signed up to Mentorcruise as it was indicated already in 2022 as leading mentorship platform, with a very diverse and professionals suite of mentors. In July 2022 I had my first mentee, who was a Mentorcruise employee, and since then, I have helped more than 75 mentees to achieve more.
How did you get your career start?
My first mentor comes from LeadTheFuture, a non-profit mentorship organization for italian students. My mentor, Francesco, had a huge impact on my life, by allowing to understand how to better visualize a goal, and autonomously breakdown goals to achieve that goal. Most importantly, how to keep track of my time and finance, two factors which lead me to have an internship at Microsoft (then converted into a full-time software engineer role), thanks to the fact that by analyzing my financial needs, I have been able to cut-off hours of work in my bar student job, to spend the available time to achieve my goal.
What do mentees usually come to you for?
Usually mentees comes to me for dedicated learning plan, technical supports in their project, technical consultancy, skills gaining, and most importantly, the ability to analyze the current market conditions, expectations, and understand how to shape their portfolio and profile to get a new job. I also have experience with mentee who needed guidance for their start-up, but most importantly, all of them are looking for accountability, as they need guidance, trust, inspiration, and motivations to keep struggling, until things will get easier, to then find a new learning curve to approach and overcome.
What's been your favourite mentorship success story so far?
My favorited mentorship success story comes from a mentee which from Hong Kong, moved to the United kingdom. Senior level, but not job experience in U.K., limited financial resources, a family to maintain, limited time, and of-course, English's was not his first language. I trained this mentee via mock interviews, guided projects, dedicated study program, and within 6 months since he arrived in UK, during the start of the 2023 economical recession, he got a job as Software engineer (contractor), an extremely well paid position, fully remote. This person trusted me, and put 100% of this mental and physicals effort to achieve his goals.
What are you getting out of being a mentor?
Being a mentor helped to have a bigger impact in other people life's. Mostly is based on sharing lessons learned by direct experience, such as burnout, jump from academic environment to the industry, ability to work in a startup environment and corporate one. I have helped more than 75 mentees in one at Mentorcruise, from students to professionals looking to upskill their-self. Interfacing with such a diverse set of background, needs, goals, helped me to further enrich my network, my knowledge, awareness against different job markets, and trainee my communications and time management skills. Of course, this effort has been seen also at Microsoft, receiving a promotion within 10 months since I joined as full-time Software engineer.