9 of the 70 new SEED Engineering mentoring program participants have
already sent in their Mentor Wish Lists. These mentor request lists
are all due on 9 July. At the same time, the participants are reviewing
their new personal (internal to Sun) web pages. These web pages can
be customized at the participant’s request but at a minimum contain
their name, title, location, and resume. The potential mentors review
the web page information when deciding whether to accept a proposed
mentee.
Two participants who entered the program already matched with their
mentors; they only need to submit a Mentor Wish List with the single name
of their already-matched mentor. Everyone else is working toward the
9 July deadline for creating their 15 name list. SEED provides a great
deal of background information on over 300 potential mentors; none the less,
creating a Mentor Wish list is time consuming and hard work.
The SEED Engineering mentoring program takes a long-term view and does not have
a preference for one kind of learning over another. That is, the mentoring partnership learning does not have to have anything to do with the participant’s current job. Some people want to learn to be better technical managers, others want to know how to get their ideas to customers faster. Many want to improve their soft skills: public presentation or speaking, negotiating, conflict management, and coaching. Still others want to improve their work and family balance and still have a great career. It takes time and mature consideration to work through all of this. Creating the Mentor Wish List is probably the hardest part of the SEED program.
It may take several days to prepare a list and reasons for preference that represent
the participant’s interests well. In creating their Mentor Wish List, each
SEED participant needs to make two difficult decisions:
- What they want to learn
- Who has already accomplished the kind of things they want to do
(that is, who is already down the path that they see themselves
walking)
One of the SEED alumni once described his experience in composing his
wish list as being like writing love letters to 15 different women.
More information on SEED is available at
http://research.sun.com/SEED/
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