I started applying to jobs in frontend and full stack development like a month before lockdown started. I was about to get an interview for an internship but that closed along with other opportunities as lockdown happened. I recently applied for this company called code your future and they seem really great, their work, vision and guidance for their fellow students new to web development.
I am currently volunteering as a full stack mentor but it’s still in the beginning stages where they are learning the basics.
I have 1.5 years experience in web development. I am an aspiring full stack developer with about 4 good projects so far in my portfolio. I don’t have any certificates. I’m from Cape Town. Most of the time jobs require certificate or degree.
My question is how much value will this volunteering as a coding mentor be on my resume?
Thanks for all valuable feedback. Much appreciated.
I think mentoring is great, but I think building more projects, contributing to open source, doing real work (even freelance) would be more valuable. The number one thing they want is people that have a proven track record of building things and solving problems. Mentoring is a side benefit that they like and expect, but as an applicant they will judge your value as a mentor in their organization by how good of a coder you are.
I think mentoring experience is useful for situations where you end up in a position where you can apply similar skills, for example either as another mentor, or some kind of leadership position. I’d also consider any management/mentorship experience to be just as good as being a “code mentor”.
Leading and mentoring people are skills in-itself, regardless of subject.
What really matters is what kind of job your applying to. If your applying for some engineering position with no mentoring duties, then mentorship experience wont help you as much as direct software engineering skills.
So it depends, but regardless having previous successful mentorship experience could help you if you want to pivot to a mentorship role in the future.
I think in your current situation it will only be helpful to mentor if you do this on top of building projects. If you mentor and replace valuable “building projects”-time, I wouldn’t do it.
I think a good questions is:
“Is this action/task/thing one of the next 3 most important steps to reach my end goal?”
If you are even more focused:
“Is this action/job/thing the next most important step to reach my end goal?”
That’s a different question. Often job postings exaggerate their needs. But a degree is a pretty concrete thing. If they say flat out that they require a degree with no wiggle room, then I usually respect that. If they say, “or equivalent experience” then that is your wiggle room.
But you can always apply if you think you’re qualified. What’s the worst thing that will happen? You won’t get the job which you won’t get anyway if you don’t apply. And they might keep your resume on file for when another job pops up.
