Being part of the Community Advocate Pilot Program at Springboard. (certificate program for career-changers)
Time Frame:
7 Months - 2021
My Role:
Peer Mentor
Featured Skills:
Design Critic
Career Advice
Logistics Support
Brainstorming
The Setup
Springboard started a pilot community advocate and peer mentor program for their students across classes (UX design, software engineering, tech sales, etc...).
I volunteered for 7 months to help other students working towards their career switch into UX design.
I was one of 20 other peer mentors along with 2 Springboard community leads to help scale this new program.
Our goal was to provide additional support for students while offering mentoring/design critique experience for the volunteers.
Creating Community Remotely
I offered a weekly standup call for students who wanted to report on their design project progress.
They could ask questions about the curriculum or show some of their in-progress designs for feedback.
We also talked about the experience of going through a career change and navigating the UX job market.
1:1 Mentoring Sessions
I also offered all these resources in a 1:1 mentoring setting.
Students could either message me on Slack or schedule a call using my Calendly link.
These allowed students to be more vulnerable about their struggles and concerns while working through the curriculum.
Tracking the Growth
For each help request I tracked who asked, what method it was, and what kind of help I provided:
UX questions about the curriculum
Design review
Springboard website/class logistics questions
Emotional support navigating a career change
Advice on networking/meeting new people
Lessons Learned
Consistency is key to creating and maintaining an active community. As time went on students knew what kind of support to expect.
Diversifying the way students can communicate with each other and us volunteers made it more approachable (message vs video call. Group vs 1:1 settings)
A sense of community makes such a big difference regardless of the projects/goals people are working towards.
