Mentor Matching — January 2024 🤝
Tags: mentorship, community, discuss, career
Published: 2024-01-11 21:57:19

This new monthly series is dedicated to helping mentors and mentees connect with one another. Many of you have requested a space like this from DEV and we've decided that a regular monthly discussion thread would offer a great option for interested folks.

The DEV Community is made up of a wide variety of developers who are at different points in their careers with separate skill sets and specialties. We're constantly sharing our experiences and learning together in public, so it feels natural to open up a space for mentors and potential mentees to meet & mingle, discuss what they're offering or hoping to get from mentorship, and plan their next steps.

## Here's How It Works

Below, we'll offer some guidance for how to approach this thread from both a mentor and a mentee's perspective.

## Guidance for Mentors 🍎

If you're a mentor and plan on using this thread to talk about your experience and what you can provide mentorship-wise, you've come to the right place. Also, thank you... we appreciate you offering to help others in our community!

> _**NOTE: If you're offering a paid-for service, we ask that you please be upfront about that in your message.**_

We recommend sharing a message about yourself that includes the following:
1. **Your experience as a developer and as a mentor.** If it's your first time offering mentorship, that's okay; please just be honest.
2. **What you're able to offer.** For example: share your preferred method of communication and how much estimated time you can provide on a daily/weekly/monthly basis.
3. **Why you're doing this.** Perhaps you remember being a beginner and would like to help someone out. Maybe you run a supportive Discord channel. Or, maybe it's part of your career in DevRel.
4. **How folks can connect with you.** You could provide contact details, point to your website, link to your socials/Discord channel/etc. — just give folks a way to get in touch.

## Guidance for Mentees ✨

Thanks for coming here to find a mentor and/or to put yourself out there as a potential mentee. We hope that this thread helps to connect you with somebody or group of folks in the DEV Community who can offer you guidance and assistance via mentorship.

> _**NOTE: We do not endorse every person who lists themselves as a mentor in this thread. Remember, this is an open thread, so please be cautious about sharing your personal details. If you see someone whose behavior or services seem suspicious, please don't hesitate to [report them to us](https://dev.to/report-abuse).**_

We recommend responding to a mentor who has let a message below and/or sharing a message about yourself that includes the following:
1. **Your current experience level as a developer.** If you're just beginning and/or in early learning stages, that's absolutely okay!
2. **What your personal goals are.** These can be long-term and aspirational, e.g. I want to become a professional web developer. They can also be more short-term and specific, e.g. I want to learn best practices for naming models in Ruby.
3. **What your personal commitment looks like.** Can you meet up multiple times a week, once a week, once a month? Are you full-time job searching or currently working somewhere else? How much time do you expect to spend on this?
4. **How folks can connect with you.** You could let a mentor know that you plan on contacting them. And/or you could provide contact details, point to your website, socials, etc.

## Match on 🤝

![A scene from Nope where the brother and sister do a really fast-paced, frantic hand-slapping handshake](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/xm3gu9w4circ89ykdzb6.gif)

Alright, now that y'all know how this works, feel free to drop your details below and let folks get to know you!