Be Instrumental: Mentor Someone to a New Trajectory

You can become a High School graduate’s mentor and help them work through TechBridge and Goodwill of North Georgia’ IT training program to navigate entry into the IT work environment. The Technology Career Program is transformational for the lives of its graduates, their families, and their communities. Our TechBridge partner Goodwill Careers is an experienced coordinator in attracting, training, and placing people in credentialed jobs. TechBridge coordinates with IT business leaders to assemble curricula that produce entry-level IT talent — talented enough to attract Georgia’s business community and make them want to snap them up as new employees. Over 16 weeks under a coach working in the IT sector, students crush learning modules in front-end web development, version control, programming languages, environment administration, and service ticketing solutions (Salesforce, SCRUM, ServiceNow) giving TechBridge graduates a leg up in a competitive technology job market.

Mentoring a student is a 16-month commitment. Training is four months; after that, you will continue to mentor throughout your student’s first 12 months on the job. Your knowledge about workplace norms, how meetings are conducted, how projects are run, and how to seek assistance will prove invaluable. Success Coach Chris Hirst of AgileThought found his mentoring experience very positive and wanted potential employers to know that these students work really hard. Serving as a success coach may mean touching base via text and through frequent conversation. As Chris said, A success coach needs to be present, be available, and sometimes push the envelope of what’s requested. It’s not a twice-a-month thing; whenever you get a chance just pick up the phone.

Chris’s mentee program graduate Jessie Roper said, My success coach has put me in the right mindset to attain my goals in the tech world. A potential student needs to know you need to be open to getting out of your comfort zone. The advice I’d give to anybody about the TCP program is, stick it out. Four months is a lot longer than you think and when you have your regular life going on at the same time, it’s hard to juggle all those things all at once, but if you stick with it, you can overcome it.

Interested in becoming a Success Coach or hiring a program graduate? START NOW.