{"id":5148,"date":"2020-08-11T14:03:11","date_gmt":"2020-08-11T21:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/3.209.169.194\/blogs\/paul\/?p=5148"},"modified":"2020-08-19T12:40:34","modified_gmt":"2020-08-19T19:40:34","slug":"mentoring-2020-want-some-help-from-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/paul\/mentoring-2020-want-some-help-from-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Mentoring 2020 &#8211; want some help from me?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[Edit 8\/19\/2020: the offer is now closed &#8211; pleased don&#8217;t post any more comments &#8211; thanks]<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Back in 2015 I mentored 54 people for a few months in a huge variety of non-technical subjects, including:<\/p>\n<ul style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<li>General career development<\/li>\n<li>Deciding whether or not to change jobs<\/li>\n<li>Becoming a consultant<\/li>\n<li>R\u00e9sum\u00e9 review and enhancement<\/li>\n<li>How to hire people<\/li>\n<li>Increasing influence<\/li>\n<li>Learning how to work with their manager<\/li>\n<li>Communication skills (e.g. writing emails, writing documents, writing clearly)<\/li>\n<li>Community exposure<\/li>\n<li>Value of certifications<\/li>\n<li>Managing a team<\/li>\n<li>Persuasion skills<\/li>\n<li>Questioning skills<\/li>\n<li>Dealing with stress and frustration<\/li>\n<li>Work\/life balance<\/li>\n<li>Blogging<\/li>\n<li>Presentation skills and public speaking<\/li>\n<li>Time management<\/li>\n<li>Evaluating SQL Server skill set<\/li>\n<li>Goal setting<\/li>\n<li>Dealing with people<\/li>\n<li>Mentoring people<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">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.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Now it&#8217;s time to do it again, as I haven&#8217;t done any public mentoring since 2015, so this blog post serves as a call for prospective mentees!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Please read the rest of this post carefully, so you&#8217;re clear how this works. We&#8217;re making a time commitment to each other so I want to be up-front about a few things.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Here are some rules for how I do this:<\/p>\n<ul style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<li>Everything is over email, no exceptions. I like asynchronous. And sometimes I might not be able to reply for a week or so.<\/li>\n<li>I only speak English, but I&#8217;m more than happy to work with anyone as long as I can understand what English you have.<\/li>\n<li>Mentoring will end mid-December 2020.<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: justify;\">This isn&#8217;t SQL Server consulting or mentoring, it&#8217;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.<\/li>\n<li>What you get out of this depends on what you put in &#8211; I won&#8217;t chase you up to reply to anything I send.<\/li>\n<li>My mentoring style is very blunt and honest and I do not sugar-coat things. I don&#8217;t mean I&#8217;m rude, I&#8217;m just clear and direct with my feedback and advice. If that&#8217;s going to offend or upset you, don&#8217;t enter.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Here&#8217;s how to put yourself on the list:<\/p>\n<ul style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<li>Important: you cannot have been part of the Class of 2015.<\/li>\n<li>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\u2019t appear right away as comments are moderated due to the amount of spam comments). No blog post, no entry in the list, no exceptions.\n<ul style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<li>Edit: same day &#8211; I&#8217;ve been asked for an exception three times now. No exceptions, means no exceptions. Same as in 2015.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Don\u2019t make the post about me, make it about you. I already know about me :-) Think career, not technical problems.<\/li>\n<li>You\u2019ve got until Tuesday 18th August at 23:59:59 PST &#8211; entries after that will not be considered.<\/li>\n<li>Comments are moderated &#8211; you won&#8217;t see your comment until I approve it (which after 7-ish PST won&#8217;t be until the next morning) so no need to post multiple comments.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">I don&#8217;t know how many people I&#8217;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 &#8216;good blog post&#8217; mean? You put some obvious thought and effort into it, but it&#8217;s at my sole discretion. I don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Don&#8217;t like the rules or how to enter? No problem &#8211; but they&#8217;re not up for discussion, so just don&#8217;t enter :-)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">I\u2019ll pick the Class of 2020 and announce them in a blog post on Wednesday or Thursday 19th\/20th August, so you&#8217;ll need to watch for that post, which will ask you to email me.\u00a0 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&#8217;ll use the pseudonym in the blog post.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Have fun &#8211; I look forward to helping a bunch of you!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Edit 8\/19\/2020: the offer is now closed &#8211; pleased don&#8217;t post any more comments &#8211; 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 R\u00e9sum\u00e9 review and enhancement How to hire [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-career"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Mentoring 2020 - want some help from me? - Paul S. 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