Situation
One of the growing demands young engineers had at Boeing was their desire to pair with experienced leaders to grow in their own technical and career skills. Propulsion’s leadership tasked me with creating an effective program for identifying, matching and supporting these relationships across the division.
Task
I started by inventorying the kinds of knowledge and skills young engineers were looking for from potential mentors, as well as what our managers, technical experts and executives were interested in offering in a relationship.
I used this information to create an interest survey for both mentors and proteges, breaking interests down into leadership, technical and career interest paths that they could select.
Next, I designed a method of collating this survey data and pre-matching potential pairings based on interests.
Finally, I designed a two-hour interview event, where mentors and proteges could interview each other in 20 minute intervals, and rate the possibility of being formally matched.
Results
I used the data I collected at these matching events quarterly to create Propulsion’s first formal mentorships. We matched over 70 pairs (95% of our proteges) in successful relationships during the program’s first year, and I trained my own staff on the process so that we could scale properly as demand grew.