[Edit 8/19/2020: the offer is now closed – pleased don’t post any more comments – thanks]
Back in 2015 I mentored 54 people for a few months in a huge variety of non-technical subjects, including:
- General career development
- Deciding whether or not to change jobs
- Becoming a consultant
- Résumé review and enhancement
- How to hire people
- Increasing influence
- Learning how to work with their manager
- Communication skills (e.g. writing emails, writing documents, writing clearly)
- Community exposure
- Value of certifications
- Managing a team
- Persuasion skills
- Questioning skills
- Dealing with stress and frustration
- Work/life balance
- Blogging
- Presentation skills and public speaking
- Time management
- Evaluating SQL Server skill set
- Goal setting
- Dealing with people
- Mentoring people
If I remember correctly, I think I helped 8 or more people decide to change jobs for a better work environment suited to their goals, and several people go it alone as consultants. It was hugely satisfying to help so many people with their careers and lives, in a non-technical capacity.
Now it’s time to do it again, as I haven’t done any public mentoring since 2015, so this blog post serves as a call for prospective mentees!
Please read the rest of this post carefully, so you’re clear how this works. We’re making a time commitment to each other so I want to be up-front about a few things.
Here are some rules for how I do this:
- Everything is over email, no exceptions. I like asynchronous. And sometimes I might not be able to reply for a week or so.
- I only speak English, but I’m more than happy to work with anyone as long as I can understand what English you have.
- Mentoring will end mid-December 2020.
- This isn’t SQL Server consulting or mentoring, it’s about you. I will not answer technical questions about SQL Server, no exceptions. But things like what to learn, how to learn, and so on are fair game.
- What you get out of this depends on what you put in – I won’t chase you up to reply to anything I send.
- My mentoring style is very blunt and honest and I do not sugar-coat things. I don’t mean I’m rude, I’m just clear and direct with my feedback and advice. If that’s going to offend or upset you, don’t enter.
Here’s how to put yourself on the list:
- Important: you cannot have been part of the Class of 2015.
- Write a blog post explaining why you would like to be mentored, and then post a link to your post as a comment on this post (it won’t appear right away as comments are moderated due to the amount of spam comments). No blog post, no entry in the list, no exceptions.
- Edit: same day – I’ve been asked for an exception three times now. No exceptions, means no exceptions. Same as in 2015.
- Don’t make the post about me, make it about you. I already know about me :-) Think career, not technical problems.
- You’ve got until Tuesday 18th August at 23:59:59 PST – entries after that will not be considered.
- Comments are moderated – you won’t see your comment until I approve it (which after 7-ish PST won’t be until the next morning) so no need to post multiple comments.
I don’t know how many people I’ll decide to mentor this time around, and will likely just number everyone who wrote a good blog post and use a random function to pick X names. X will be between 10 and 50. What does ‘good blog post’ mean? You put some obvious thought and effort into it, but it’s at my sole discretion. I don’t care who you are, where you are, who you work for, what gender you are, or how good your English is; you have as equal a chance of being picked as anyone else who wrote a good post.
Don’t like the rules or how to enter? No problem – but they’re not up for discussion, so just don’t enter :-)
I’ll pick the Class of 2020 and announce them in a blog post on Wednesday or Thursday 19th/20th August, so you’ll need to watch for that post, which will ask you to email me. Note: if picked, your name and a link to your post will be published in that post. If you want to be anonymous online, write under a pseudonym and email me so I know who you are, and I’ll use the pseudonym in the blog post.
Have fun – I look forward to helping a bunch of you!