Spotted this and thought, what is stopping you from mentoring juniors? Is it pressure to deliver, too many fires to put out, not enough people testing so you gotta be hands-on, a systemic problem with how the organisation is set up or something else?
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The only thing stopping me from mentoring junior is my experience, I’m the least experienced person in testing in my team👻
Hence instead of mentoring i get mentored 
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Very passionate about mentoring Juniors so this definitely caught my eye.
This is very much down to the culture of the team the junior is in. I don’t think “the boss” is responsible solely for hands on mentoring as it kind of means the rest of the team has nothing to do with it. Organisations who bring juniors in genuinely wanting to develop their careers will ensure there is a plan for the mentoring time needed and a culture that encourages it. Organisations seeing juniors as a way to up the headcount on a budget won’t.
I’ve never had any issues mentoring juniors in my teams. Even if I was in an organisation that recruited them for the wrong reasons, I was 100% invested in their success. But I’ve seen it fail in other teams, and thats usually been because they’ve been recruited for the wrong reasons and their managers haven’t been as invested in their success, putting unrealistic expectations on the junior.
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Nothing! I am and not even just juniors 
I mentor people on the job, I mentor people in the company I work for, I mentor people online.
But to add onto that, I do sometimes decline a mentee. If they are not passionate or not dedicated enough, things will fade, so in order to mentor someone I will always ask a few questions.
My main moto is: “*You are no more powerful than you make yourself. If you see yourself as having weakness, you are simply increasing the problem. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.*​”
So I’ll often ask them about their strengths and weaknesses and address them and how we can tackle them together, I ask about their goals because it’s not up to me to decide what he/she wants.
I will clearly state that I sometimes can give hard feedback and point out struggles and hurdles AND I also note that hurdles and struggles are growth possibilities.
And most of the time people accept our mentee/mentor relationship but some people don’t because they lack dedication and don’t really want a “mentor or master” - they just want somebody to carry them and teach them but put in no effort themselves.
Always open to mentor people. Time is a concept that people don’t understand because they waste it too often. I’m very good on time management so I have all the time in the world
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I like this approach — important to help set expectations and understand context.
As a side note, here’s what I share when I’m approached to be a mentor:
So I can understand your reasons for seeking a mentor and see if I’m a good person to help, would you mind answering the following questions? I appreciate you’ve covered some of this already in your message.
- What are you looking for in a mentor/mentee setup?
- What level of commitment would help you?
- Do you have a timeframe in mind? One off call, a month, 3 months etc
- How do you imagine the mentorship working? Calls, asynchronous chat etc
- Is there anything else you can share that would help set expectations?
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Some people believe in #sharingIsCaring and improvement in the team so they do proactively - #selfmotivation
Others wanted it to be formalised by someone so they can do it. #needsArrangement
Some wanted to see any incentives / benefits or may be part of their KPI to do this activity.
#needManagementPush
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From my personal experience on unofficial mentoring, or rather knowledge transfer/sharing, and guiding others: sometimes it’s the time and effort involved to mentor together with current job duties/requirements.
Not to sound biased, but the mentoring progress partly depends on how well the mentee learns, and how skilled (or “sharp”) they are to begin with. Some are quick learners, where you can give them pointers to guide them along, some take a lot of hand holding, demonstration, and back & forth. If I had nothing to do or was retired, mentoring the slow learners is not an issue, but with work and non-retired life, mentoring slow learners is time consuming and slow progress that it can sometimes be draining.
So I have time to spare to assist a fast learner, but it can get a bit tough helping a slow learner.
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It’s the pressure to deliver more items and fewer hands to do the required tests. Support from management to streamline line process, delivery expectations fromthe product, and more quality engineers would help experienced folks to support juniors in the team.
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