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Copilot Academy Mentorship Program

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Product

A company-sponsored mentorship program rooted in mentees formally pitching mentors for guidance on a 3-month project. Built from grassroots efforts, adopted and promoted by the HR team to drive employee engagement, retention, and recruitment.

Mentor/Mentee matching

My Role

  • Community Manager Recruited and supported prospective mentors and mentees to build up a mentorship marketplace that spanned teams (e.g. sales, engineering, HR) and seniorty (from interns to the CEO)
  • Champion to Leadership Led the effort to establish an official company sponsored mentorship program. Worked with leadership to prove out the process by running a pilot program with 1 mentor/mentee pair.
  • Mentor and Mentee Participated as a mentor and mentee in the program supporting/executing both data science and product management projects.

Execution

When we set off to build a mentorship program we were advised that company mentorship programs usually die off just 2 cycles in, usually because too much demand is put on the mentors and mentees and participants burn out.

To ensure we could keep a program running longer than 2 cycles, we landed on three key factors to keeping a mentorship program alive:

  1. Mentees drive the mentorship relationship from start to finish
  2. Mentors have the final say in who they choose to mentor
  3. The official mentorship relationship only lasts 3 months

With these pillars in mind we created the Co-Pilot Academy. Mentees are required to pitch prospective mentors on why they want to be mentored and for what purpose. Mentors receive pitches and choose to accept the pitch or not. If accepted, the 3-month mentorship relationship begins.

To gain leadership buyin and company sponsorship we ran a 3-month pilot program with one official mentor/mentee match. We followed up with a demonstration of the results to leadership who greenlit a full rollout in the Fall of 2018.

Challenges & Achievements

Challenges

  • Mentees don't know what to pitch Mentees coming through the program struggled to know what type of project they should pitch. We built a template and held office hours to ensure they were able to overcome the hurdle.
  • Mentors are afraid no one will pick them A common refrain when recruiting a new mentor to join was "what if no one picks me??". To solve for this we focused our recruiting on senior level folks and provided examples of previous pitches to inspire mentors' confidence that the mentor marketplace had a need for their skillset.
  • Mentors are unable to complete their projects and drop the ball We worked with previous mentees to learn what the hangups were so we could prevent issues in the future (e.g. ensuring manager buyin so the mentee could spend time on their project during the work week)

Achievements

  • 50+ matches in the first 6 sessions The mentorship program saw great traction from the first session we ran with 100+ mentors and mentees signing up and on average 10 pitches submitted each session.
  • Mentees gaining promotions from their work Mentees worked closely with company leaders across the organization and many learned new skills that helped them advance their careers within Airship.
  • Program became a recruitment darling More than just HR, hiring managers were keen to discuss the program with their candidates directly and relayed that the program was a hit in hiring conversations.