Why did you decide to become a mentor?
Becoming a mentor happened very organically to me. As and how I progressed in my career since the last decade, I started gathering attention from individuals who aspired to have a similar career trajectory as mine and/or wanted to learn certain specifics from my career journey and I initially started with a few mentees and over a period of time, I mentored several mentees who needed help in various dimensions such as career growth in tech companies, skill development, navigating challenging projects at work and so on. Making a difference in the lives of several individuals keeps me motivated to keep mentoring people.
When, I came across mentorcruise, I realized I could make an impact to many individuals at scale and hence I decided to join the platform.
How did you get your career start?
While there are several factors that are helping me in having a good career, the most important of all are passion for the field of machine learning, hard work and thinking big. In the last decade I did not shy away from any challenging tasks or projects that came along my way. I did due diligence in solving customer centric problems impacting millions of consumers worldwide, which helped me achieve success. Along, the way, I did get guidance from mentors on certain aspects which helped me move faster in my career. I would also like to emphasize on having solid foundations and skills in the field you are working in or aspire to be in.
What do mentees usually come to you for?
Mentees usually come to me for transitioning to data science, data analytics and machine learning related roles. I have also had mentees who needed help with growing their careers in current companies, navigating through complex aspects of the projects they are working on. Furthermore, my mentees also use my expertise in practicing mock interviews.
I typically have a session with potential mentees before signing up to learn about their short term and long term goals and give them a structure of how I will be helping them either in transitioning to data science related roles, help with mock interviews etc and once the potential mentee and I are aligned we go about achieving the goals set out for mentees with solid action items to achieve during the course of the mentorship.
What’s been your favourite mentorship success story so far?
Mentorship relationships require a lot of work both from mentees as well as mentors in order to be successful. In the last several years, I had many mentees whom I helped achieve both their short term and long term goals. I have had mentees who were able to transition from Business Analyst to Data Scientists and then get promoted to senior data related roles. Additionally, several mentees who were facing challenges to either grow their scope in current roles and/or wanted to get promoted to senior levels were able to achieve promotions and grow their scope under my guidance as a mentor.
Furthermore, I have held mentorship sessions for large student groups in Universities and across the world.
What are you getting out of being a mentor?
Mentorship has helped me give back to the machine learning/data science community in many ways. Through mentorship I up-skill individuals to become much stronger in their contributions to the field and hence continually improving the field of ML and Data Science. It also helps me with leadership qualities such as developing and grooming the best. Also, mentoring so many different individuals from different countries, different walks of life, helps me understand various different challenges that people aspiring to have a successful tech career are facing, which enables me to continuously improve my mentoring skills as well - so that I can always keep a high bar for my mentor-mentee sessions.