A look at Coupang engineering’s mentorship program

Inside our mentorship program that helps our employees grow

By Cynthia Seo

This post is also available in Korean.

Mentorship is one of the resources that allows employees to build a partnership for the purposes of growth and learning. Informal mentorships happen in the organization, but formal mentorship programs allow employees to have equal opportunity to develop. This post shares a little about the mentorship program we officially initiated in 2021 for our employees in the tech organization at Coupang to help support the relationships to develop.

What is mentorship?

Mentorship is a positive and supportive relationship between two people that has the power to help one achieve their goals and fuel self-development. It is also a knowledge-sharing opportunity that facilitates flow of information where the mentor and mentee can freely discuss about mentee’s skills, career, and goals.

Our mentorship program

The mentorship program aims to create a nourishing and inclusive environment which can foster growth and development for employees beyond their immediate team or manager. Through effective mentor-mentee relationships, mentees can maximize their potential and mentors can become multipliers.

The goals we have for the mentees of the program are to:

• understand how to excel at their current level.
• understand what it takes to get to the next level.
• receive career development guidance from senior leaders.
• expand network through mentors to help their growth and development.
• get advice for navigating their professional careers.
• find inspiration from mentors who have experience overcoming various types of challenges.

How it works

Every quarter, we request to receive applications for the program within the tech organization. Anyone from the organization can apply to the program, whether they are an engineer, product owner, designer, technical PM, data scientist, business analyst, or something else. They can apply to be a mentor, a mentee, or both. They can also request to be mentored by a mentor in a specific field.

Once received, a group of facilitators discuss and carefully pair mentors and mentees in a way that is most beneficial for the involved participants. We primarily focus on the needs and goals of the mentee but also consider practical elements like the language and time zone as our employees are distributed worldwide. Once paired, we provide various guidelines and tips to the participants to help their mentorship which lasts for a length of 3 months — but they can progress in any way they like.

Normally in the first 1–2 weeks, the two get to know each other and agree upon the expectations and goals from the program. Then, they meet up roughly every 2 weeks depending on their schedule. Meetings can be structured or very free style, but we provide various tips, templates, and guidelines to help make the experience more effective and enjoyable. Here are some of the activities we recommend.

• Coffee chat: Talk over coffee in person or online to casually get to know each other or discuss about moving forward career-wise.
• Scenario-based exercises: Discuss past or upcoming situations, potential scenarios, and receive guidance from the mentor.
• Role play: Act out difficult scenarios to gain practice and prepare for an upcoming event, or use role play to understand the behavior of someone else.
• Shadowing: Mentee joins their mentor for a day to an event or a meeting and learns through observation.
• Networking: Mentor introduces those within or outside of the company to help the mentee.
• Peer feedback: Mentee requests feedback from their peer and use their mentor as a sounding board to discuss the feedback and ways to improve on it.

At the end of the 3-month mentorship, the mentor and mentee can agree to end the program if they feel that they have achieved their goals or choose to participate in another round of the program together. They can also choose to participate separately in the program depending on need, but in any case, they are free to speak to each other casually on their own outside of the program.

What makes our program special?

There isn’t a magic formula for creating a mentorship program that is successful or special. In fact, mentorship requires efforts and commitment from both the mentor and mentee to make it effective. We focus on the following areas to help the participants make most of the program.

Careful matching: The mentor-mentee relationship is the key success factor for any mentorship. We put in a lot of time and effort in the matching process to ensure that we satisfy the needs of our participants and match the right people together.

Trust and confidentiality: Trust and confidentiality are sacrosanct and without it the outcome of the mentorship will not reach its full potential. We proactively guide participants to build their relationship on trust and also inform them that complete confidentiality is ensured.

Openness and flexibility: The mentorship program is not an extension of work nor is it mandatory. While we provide participants with the relevant guidance and training throughout the course of our carefully crafted program, participants are free to utilize the program to their preference and schedule.

Feedback and improvement: We constantly measure the success of our program to tweak it according to our participants’ needs and feedback.

“This program helped me a lot, especially to move to the next level in my career.”

“I received valuable insight on my work and some of the problems I was facing… and I found a good mentor/friend.”

Future of mentorship

We started our program as a pilot project and have now completed 2 cycles of the official program. Here are some results we found to be meaningful.

✓ We had an average of 100 mentees for each iteration of the program.

✓ The average satisfaction score was 8 out of 10.

✓ We had an increase in the number of participants at a higher job level, particularly those who wanted to be mentors.

✓ We had an increase of mentees who expressed that the mentorship not only positively impacted their career growth but also helped to enhance their soft skills, innovative thinking, and confidence.

✓ Some mentees were able to consult with fellow women in tech for advice or connect with a mentor from a team that they were interested about transitioning into.

✓ Mentors also expressed that it was an opportunity to learn about the difficulties of junior staff, demonstrate knowledge and leadership, and discover areas in which we can improve together.

✓ We saw many relationships continue after the completion of the 3-month program.

However, there is always room to grow, and we want to influence more people. As we continue to support our participants in various ways, we hope the mentorship program will become an integral part of our culture and help to produce future leaders of the company.

Our tech organization is comprised of various teams including data engineering, development, infra engineering, tech management, and UX. Check out our careers website to see available positions, get to know us, and explore your possibilities.