Zig Ziglar once said that “A lot of people have gone further than they thought they could, because someone else thought they could.“ We strongly believe this is true and that’s why we turned to the power of mentorship.
At Maxcode, each individual has a mentor who helps and guide him in both professional and personal development process. They work together on assessing the technical and non-technical skills and creating a personal development plan with SMART objectives that reflect the learning direction for each person. We strongly believe that this process summarizes our push towards becoming a better version of ourselves.
So, how does it work?
You (as well as every Maxcode employee) choose your mentor, a person who works closely with you and who has a good overview of your activities and performance. This mentor is, especially in the beginning, someone from your own team and of the same (or similar) discipline. However, this is not a rule. The mentor should be a person that can help you acquire new skills and guide you to the right career path. New employees will be assigned a mentor from their team, in a later stadium of your Maxcode career this can be from another team or management, depending on your personal needs and ambitions.
Together with your mentor, you will evaluate your technical skills based on a skill-matrix and, taking into account the feedback received from the team, you create a Personal Development Plan. This represents the process of defining what is important and what you want to achieve within a period of time, the strengths you already possess and what you need to improve and develop over time.
In creating your Personal Development Plan, you will
- think of the areas you want to develop in the next period (6 months, 1 year)
- think of the skills you like to add or improve
- phrase your objectives in a SMART way (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound)
- Set specific action points which are used to measure the achievements your set objectives
In Maxcode, we encourage everyone to provide and receive feedback constantly, as this is a core value for us. We structure this feedback with the KALM approach (Keep, Add, Less and More) and we use it as a tool for constant learning and growing.
You and your mentor develop a bond and frequently discuss about received feedback, the progress in reaching your objectives in your Personal Development Plan, impediments you encountered or – if needed – you modify the objectives. By receiving and discussing this recurrent feedback, together with your mentor, we know from experience that everyone manages to find his or her most optimal learning path.