A Good Mix of the Practical and the Personal

[In critiquing her résumé] I looked for engineering experiences Patricia doesn't have that she might want to add to her toolbox.

When Ford Motor Company became a corporate sponsor of MentorNet in Fall 1999, an email was sent to employees, inviting anyone with an interest to visit the MentorNet web site and consider becoming a mentor. Rachel Everett read the message and went straight to the site.

"MentorNet's mission of promoting engineering and technology degrees and careers for women really appealed to me, and I signed up the same day," Rachel says. " A mentoring relationship with someone in industry would've been useful to me in college, and helping somebody else seemed like a good idea. Plus, I'm fairly young, so the opportunity to meet people in engineering who'd be in careers soon seemed like it could benefit me, too."

An arranged match

I especially wanted to hear what it's like to work in her sector of corporate America, and how she navigates work relationships.

This year Rachel, a design engineer based at Ford's Product Development Division in Dearborn, Michigan, undertook her second mentoring assignment, with Wambui Patricia Gachiengo, who had been a television broadcaster in her native Kenya before finding her way into engineering. A few years older than Rachel and the mother of a 10-year-old son, Patricia is a first-year graduate student in manufacturing systems engineering at Stanford. She'd had many informal mentors in academia and industry, but Rachel was her first arranged match, and Patricia knew exactly what she wanted from her.

"I've always enjoyed having someone in industry with more experience than I serve as a compass for me, so I can keep checking that I'm going in the right direction," Patricia says. "In this case, I was interested in knowing whether Rachel had done an internship, and if so, how she chose it. I also wanted to see her résumé and to dialogue about writing them. And I especially wanted to hear what it's like to work in her sector of corporate America, and how she navigates work relationships."

Their email discussions about Rachel's work experience and internships has led Patricia to consider pursuing an internship in product design rather than manufacturing. Rachel then asked a coworker who is a member of the Society of Women in Engineering to research whether the Bay Area chapter of SWE had leads on internships for which Patricia might apply.

Sharpening her tools

Rachel also critiqued Patricia's résumé with an eye for how an internship could enhance it.

"I looked for engineering experiences Patricia doesn't have that she might want to add to her toolbox - tools in failure modes and effects analysis, root cause analysis, and experimental design, for example," Rachel says. "Ford requires all its engineers to demonstrate proficiency in these basic engineering tools, and you get them not necessarily in classes but more often through internships or on-the-job training. I pointed out to Patricia that if she's not familiar with these tools, she needs to be, and if she is, she needs to advertise that."

Patricia says she found all this advice helpful and was also keen on drilling deeper into Rachel's personal workplace experiences.

"Rachel kept up a steady stream of talk about how work was going, and how she was solving different relationship problems with coworkers. It was good to hear how she was dealing with her project work, of course, but the office politics piece was really interesting to me, because that's the part of work life that I find difficult," Patricia says. "In a field where women are so outnumbered, it's hard to know whether someone is treating you the way they're treating you because you're a woman or because they're that way with everyone. Sharing stories and examples is a valuable way of learning about that."

Great thought-starters

For Rachel, Patricia's questions got the wheels turning.

"Through a previous internship, Patricia had seen how political games are played for self-promotion, and at the time she brought that up with me, I had a supervisor who was entrenched in office politics," Rachel says. "I told her how I deal with it, and what the consequences have been. Our talks about this were very honest, and the questions Patricia asked because of her work in other industries were great thought-starters for us.

"I mentioned to her recently that even if we aren't matched next year, I hope we remain in contact. It's been a great relationship, and I so strongly admire Patricia," Rachel continues. "From our first conversation, when I learned she's a single mother, in her second career, and separated from most of her family in Africa and other parts of the U.S., I've appreciated the guts, the determination, and the strength it takes to do what she's doing."

Patricia and Rachel clearly enjoyed a win-win match.

"For me, the greatest value of this mentoring experience has been the consistent dialogue with Rachel," Patricia says. "I always know she's there if I want to run something by her, and she's great about replying really fast. Our relationship has been very relaxed - a good mix of the practical and the personal, and a good fit for me."