3 Ways to Join Mentors in Tech for Year 4

Hi LinkedIn Friends!

We built the Mentors in Tech (MinT) program at the start of the pandemic in 2020 with the mission to help overlooked and underserved CS/IT students from small, less well known, affordable, and accessible colleges navigate the CS hiring process and get their foot in the door in tech.

Thanks to many friends and colleagues, in the past 3 years, we have been able to partner with a dozen college CS programs and help almost 500 non-traditional, modern college CS students, many of them furthest from opportunities in tech, launch their careers in tech. These opportunities are life changing for our students and their families.

In 2022, 75% of our students landed a tech role 6 months after graduation at an average salary of $95k. This is 50% more than comparable graduates from similar institutions in half the time. Despite the headwinds in tech hiring, MinT’s 2023 graduates are trending in the same direction thanks to the support and commitment of our mentors, college, and industry partners. MinT was selected for this year's Geekwire Geeks Give Back Award thanks to mentors from the tech community coming together.

If you can set aside 1 hour a week during the school year, do consider joining us for the 2023-24 year. To learn more, watch the 10-minute info session and apply to be a mentor.

2 Additional ways to work with our students:

Companies and organizations interested in working with our students at an even deeper level can partner with MinT on:

• Industry and Open-Source Capstones - Capstones projects enable student teams to demonstrate their unique strengths while contributing to a quarter long real-world project. Past capstone partners and projects include GitHub CLI, Edge Accessibility, 2Sigma School, Rust, and Flutter.
• Hiring - MinT students and alumni offer diverse backgrounds and life experiences that make them a great fit for a wide range of technical and tech enabled roles. We can partner with your organization to identify the right talent for your hiring needs.?

What our students and faculty say about the impact of our mentors:

Mentors like you make the structured mentoring relationship work. 97% of our students this past academic year felt confident in their ability to successfully transition from student to tech professional, and 90% feel they can confidently navigate the tech hiring ecosystem.

What our students say about our industry mentors and program:

• I was THOROUGHLY impressed by how helpful, open, and honest [my mentor] was throughout our sessions. He was (and still is) responsive to emails, which is too cool. I can't overstate how helpful the information that he shared with me was.
• I’m so thankful for the opportunity to work side by side with engineers in the field! I also fully intend to sign up as a mentor once I'm graduated and working!
• My Mentor got straight to the point and after listening to me, told me things that might not be what I wanted to hear, but will definitely be helpful in my job search and interviews.

What our partner faculty say about our mentors:

• Having the stable guidance throughout the year has boosted degree retention and completion rates. The support provided by the MinT mentors continually reinforce the students’ focus and remind them that despite often coming from an underrepresented group in tech, they do indeed have the ability to make an impact in the industry.
• Mentors’ personal perspectives and encouraging words help students break through the stereotypes and sort through the conflicting advice they otherwise struggle to decipher on their own, and I’ve seen many students find their stride once the path forward gets illuminated with the help of their mentors.