Onboarding Mentor

In addition to an Onboarding Buddy, some teams have Onboarding Mentors. New teammates will be paired up with an Onboarding Mentor. The mentor will be someone from their own team who will act as a point of contact for role-related support during their ramp period. As a peer, mentors will provide support and guidance while teammates are learning and practicing role specific tasks and skills.

Mentors are colleagues that accompany new teammates. They provide insight, context and help teammates understand who and where to go to for whatever they need.

We expect mentors to be the onboarding mentor they would love to have when starting a new role. Be as patient, as detailed, and as relevant as they would want someone to be with them when joining a company and learning about their day-to-day.

Mentors should never feel pressured to know everything. They should be honest when they are uncertainty and reach out to places where they can find the right answer.

Why We Have Onboarding Mentors

Mentors ensure new teammates are set up for success and have additional resources while they learn the industry, product, and hone the skills that will make them successful.

The Role of the Mentor

The role of the mentor is to support the first 30 days of a new hire’s ramp period. It’s essential to the learning and development of new teammates, critical for Sourcegraph to scale operations, and beneficial to the mentor because they are able to develop deeper selling skills by mentoring a peer.

Being an onboarding mentor is not a chore or something that is “taking up time.” This is something we all need to do to support each other. The more mentors can be there for their mentees, the stronger the team will continue to be.

If you feel you cannot be an effective mentee for whatever reason, let management know ahead of time.

Mentor Selection

When selecting a mentor, managers should ensure that the mentor fits the following profile:

  • On the same team and in the same role
  • Been at Sourcegraph for at least 3 months, with satisfactory sales performance and productivity
  • Ensure mentor has the bandwidth to support new hire through the mentor tasks and aim to follow the guideline of no more than one new hire mentee assigned to each mentor per quarter
  • Ideally, be in the same time zone (to aid in scheduling meetings between mentor/new hire)

Once a mentor is selected, managers should notify onboarding@sourcegraph.com with the choice. The mentor should also be notified with enough time.

Enabling Mentor

It is highly recommended to enable mentors with tools, resources and even checklists that they can use to guide and support them through this month. It is important for mentors to know what the new teammate’s onboarding looks lik and the different technical stages are so they can provide extra guidance.

You can find team specific Onboarding Mentor Checklists here: