Career Mentor Timeline

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The timeline below will outline where your mentee should be on their education journey and how you fit into the process.

Month 1 - Trainees will be nearing the end of their course-based learning. They have a month before they progress to final projects. They will be working on small teams to develop a working product for CYF or an external organisation.

You will start your role as a Career Mentor by conducting competency-based mock interviews with 2 trainees from a CYF class.

This helps you get a sense of the skills and personalities in the class. You get an idea of what your potential mentee may need to work improving for their own job search.

Then you will have a Career Mentor Briefing session with the other Career mentors in your city/region. This should take 1-1.5 hours. We will cover the material here as well as highlight the skills we think you can support your mentee to develop. After the Career Mentor Briefing, we will match you with your two mentees. The trainees will apply for a mentor based on the information you provide in your mentoring application. They will have to write an essay saying who they choose and what they think they could learn from you. A week or so later, we will facilitate your first meeting with your mentees. This will be either during their weekend class (on Saturday in most cities, but Sunday in London) or during a weeknight evening.

Month 2 - Trainees should have progressed to Final Projects

Your mentee will complete their class-based learning and progress to Final Projects. Your mentees will have to demonstrate their employability skills to do this: graduation from CYF comprises tech and soft skills assessments, completing a team based final project, and presenting that project at a demo day.

During the Final Project which lasts 4 weeks, you will need to support your mentees with working in a project team and manage any issues that arise for them. You may also want to help them prepare to demo their product. Once you get started with your mentees you will be added to our #cyf-career-mentors channel on our Slack workspace. This will enable you to connect with all the other mentors in our regions. It is also the primary way we will communicate with all of you. If you prefer email, please do let us know when you apply. We suggest you have your mentoring sessions as a group. This will encourage your mentees to work with each other and support one another. It also helps you use your time more effectively.

Month 3 - Trainees should complete their Final Projects and prepare to demonstrate them at Demo Day.

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After graduation, they will have to apply to join a CYF Tech Project. These are real jobs developed through CodeYourFuture's partnerships with other charities and NGOs.