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# System prepended metadata

title: The role of the REG Technical Mentor

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# The role of the REG Technical/Project Mentor

The role of a Technical/Project Mentor within REG is to provide some additional support to Junior members, to help them settle into the and their projects. The Mentor should normally be a member of the same project as the Junior and should focus on supporting them in that context. Their Line Manager should normally take the lead in supporting a  Junior in REG and the Turing more generally.

The Technical Mentor role is relatively new within REG. The notes below are for guidence, and should be adapted as appropriate for individual circumstances.


## Onboarding on the project

In the first few week, help the Junior find their place in the project.

- Discuss with them why is the project interesting/exciting?
- Check their allocation on Forecast. When to they formally start on the project? Note
  that due to budget and other reasons there can be a wide variation in how soon after
  the Junior’s start of employment, their project allocation. You will need to ensure
  that plans for their onboarding accounts for this.
- Organise some reading - enough to give them the scope and scale of the project, without overwhelming them with details.
- Organise some initial tasks to enable to be actively involved in the project. Ideally these should be discrete and achievable without too much context. They do not need to be perfectly aligned with the project priorities.
- Help setting up their laptops and development environment.
- Co-working sessions
- Introduction them to the other REG people working the project and (depending on the scale of the project) a selection of key project team members who aren't in REG.
- Ensure that they are familiar with key project management tools - tasklists, documentation, regular meetings, budgets etc.

## What technical skills do they have
- What do they already have?
- What do they want / need to learn? As required, along with them and their line manager, form a plan for them to acquire them.
- Ensure that they do spend time on their 22-day project and learning.
- Shared resources (across) REG for learning things like Git, Python, virtual environments, etc.

## Relationship building
- Protect them from over-demanding PIs
- Ensure that they get some experience of building relationships with researchers (including knowing when to say yes and when to say no).


## To be resolved:

* **Title;** Is "Technical Mentor" the right title? Would "Project Mentor" be a more realistic title?
