Latest / The Promotion Memo with Fexingo: Getting Visibility, Sponsors, and Executive Presence / How One Employee Got Promoted by Creating a Mentorship Program
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot on this show about individual tactics — building a portfolio, running a lunch and learn, writing a career biography. Luna: Right, all the ways to get noticed without necessarily having a formal leadership title. Lucas: Exactly. And today I want to look at something that's a bit bigger in scope, but I think even more powerful when it comes to getting that promotion. I'm talking about creating a formal mentorship program. Luna: Like, you as an individual employee design and launch a mentorship initiative from scratch? That sounds ambitious. Lucas: It does, but the case I'm going to walk through shows exactly how it can work. I was talking to an engineering manager at a mid-size fintech company — let's call him Raj. He was a senior engineer, very good technically, but he kept getting passed over for the director role. Luna: What was the missing piece for him? Lucas: He was seen as a great individual contributor but not as someone who could scale the team or build culture. So he looked for a problem that was visible to leadership. And he found one: the company was hiring a lot of junior engineers straight out of bootcamps, and their ramp-up time was long — like six months to become productive. Plus, retention was shaky; about 30 percent of new hires left within their first year. Luna: That's a classic pain point. High turnover is expensive, and slow ramp-up kills team velocity. Lucas: Exactly. So Raj proposed a mentorship program where senior engineers would each take on two junior hires for a three-month period. He didn't just suggest the idea — he built a full proposal with a timeline, a mentor matching process, a curriculum for the first month, and a way to measure outcomes. Luna: What kind of matching process did he use? Lucas: He created a simple survey for both mentors and mentees — things like preferred programming languages, communication style, career goals. Then he wrote a script that paired them based on complementary needs. It wasn't fancy; it was basically a spreadsheet with some conditional logic. But it worked. Luna: So he took ownership of the entire execution. That's key — he didn't just hand a proposal to his boss and hope. Lucas: Right. He piloted it with ten mentor-mentee pairs. And he tracked two metrics: time to productivity — measured by the first merged pull request — and six-month retention. After six months, the program participants had a 20 percent better retention rate than the control group, and their time to first pr dropped from an average of 60 days to 45. Luna: Fifteen days shaved off. That's a concrete dollar figure when you think about salary costs. Lucas: Exactly what he used when he presented the results to the VP of Engineering. He calculated that the program saved the company roughly fifty thousand dollars in reduced turnover and faster ramp-up over the six-month pilot. That got attention. Luna: And then he got the director role? Lucas: Not immediately. But six months later, when the VP expanded the program company-wide, Raj was asked to lead it. And that came with a promotion to senior director of engineering. Because he had proven he could design, execute, and scale a program that solved a real business problem. Luna: That's a great story. And I think the lesson goes beyond just mentorship — it's about finding a gap that leadership cares about and building a solution that has measurable impact. Lucas: Exactly. And you know, that kind of initiative takes time and effort. It's not something you do overnight. But the return on that investment can be life-changing. If we've helped you think through a career move like this, and you want to support the show, listeners can buy us a coffee at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's a small way to keep these episodes ad-free and focused on real strategies. Luna: Yeah, every bit helps. We appreciate it. Lucas: So back to Raj. One thing I want to highlight is how he framed the proposal. He didn't pitch it as a 'nice to have' or a culture perk. He framed it as a talent retention and productivity initiative. Luna: That's smart. Because leadership cares about metrics, not feelings. Lucas: Right. He wrote a one-page executive summary that started with the problem: 'We spend an average of six months to bring a junior engineer to full productivity, and we lose 30 percent of them in the first year.' Then he showed the projected savings. The program cost almost nothing — just the time of the mentors, which was already part of their job. Luna: And he probably got some pushback, right? 'We don't have time for mentorship' or 'It's not a priority.' Lucas: Absolutely. His VP initially said, 'That sounds great, but we don't have bandwidth.' So Raj came back with a proposal that limited mentor commitment to one hour per week, with clear guidelines on what that hour covered. He made it easy to say yes. Luna: That's a critical lesson. You have to remove the friction for decision-makers. Lucas: Exactly. And once the pilot showed results, the conversation shifted from 'should we do this?' to 'how do we scale this?' That's the moment Raj became the obvious person to lead the expansion. Luna: So for someone listening who wants to try this: what's the first step? Lucas: First, identify a specific problem in your organization that mentorship could address. It might be onboarding, it might be retention, it might be skill gaps in a certain area. Second, gather data — talk to junior employees, talk to managers, get a sense of the scope. Third, design a minimal viable program. Don't try to build the whole thing at once. Luna: And then pilot it with a small group, measure everything, and present the results. Lucas: Exactly. And be ready to iterate. Raj's first matching algorithm wasn't perfect; some pairs didn't click. But he tracked satisfaction scores and adjusted. After two cycles, he had a 90 percent satisfaction rate. Luna: That kind of continuous improvement is exactly what leadership wants to see in a potential director. Lucas: Right. And it's not just about the program itself. It's about the signal you send: that you can think strategically, execute operationally, and communicate results. That's the trifecta for promotion. Luna: I think the other takeaway is that you don't need to be a manager to start something like this. Raj was a senior engineer, not a director. Lucas: Exactly. He acted like a leader before he had the title. That's the whole point of this show. Luna: So for our next episode, maybe we can dive into how to get executive buy-in when you don't have a formal relationship with them. Lucas: I like that. Let's plan it.