How it works
We didn't set out to make a 'conventional' mentorship program. We wanted to change the way people connect, learn, and get hired.
STEP 1
Take an assessment
Soft Screening
Interview with a mentor to ensure that you:
Speak and write fluent English
Have business sense and employability traits
Are trained in data and are competent in 1+ data tools. They will assess your degrees and certificates from colleges, universities, bootcamps and MOOCs.
Our soft screening generally results in more uncertainty on the mentor’s end, which increases their risk. To compensate for their risk, this option usually results in higher income share rates for the mentor.
Hard Screening
Assess your skills and services required through a take-home, open-book test, including:
Live Coding: Test your code with sample data
Case Study: Showcase your business writing, logical thinking, approach to business problems, treatment of data issues, data analysis, data modelling, data visualization, conclusions and recommendations.
Hard screening proves your abilities and reduces mentor risk, which helps you negotiate down mentor income share rates.
STEP 2
Match with a mentor &
Sign an agreement
Our Income Share Agreement (ISA) is an agreement between you and your mentor, designed to reduce your risk.
- You will discuss and agree upon a reasonable expectation of role and starting salary upon completion with your mentor.
- You will agree to performance expectations to be met on your end.
- When you accept a job offer, you will pay a small percentage of your first year salary
We guarantee that you land a job that meets or exceeds your expectations. If you don’t get hired, you don’t pay. This way, we ensure everyone is working towards the same goal:
Getting You HIRED!
STEP 3
Start the mentorship!
Be ready for life-changing breakthroughs
Example:
Mentor Jammy offers to help mentee Alex land a Data Analyst job that pays at least $60,000 (Income Floor) in exchange for 10% of his first year income. This includes:
- 7% ($4,200) to the mentor
- 3% ($1,800) to WeCareer.
- A total of 10% ($6,000) to be deducted from earnings in year 1
Alex later lands an offer of $70,000 and starts making monthly payments on 10% of his monthly earnings (10% x$70,000 / 12 = $583 plus tax). However, he only makes monthly payments if and when his monthly earned income meets or exceeds the monthly income floor ($60,000/12). If Alex loses his job, his monthly earned income falls below the monthly income floor. Therefore, he pauses monthly payments.
Alex’s ISA will complete when one of two things happens:
he has made 12 monthly payments
24 months has lapsed.
After year one of employment, Alex has fulfilled his obligation to WeCareer and his mentor. He is now on his way to a prosperous career.
Talent Development Framework
How do we prepare you for the job market?
A job search requires creative productivity, everyday. The power of small wins is the key to success. Progress – or lack thereof – rules your emotions. Of all the things that can keep your spirits up on any given day, the single most important thing is making progress. Everyday, we want you to believe you are an inch closer to your dream job.
A positive feedback loop is built into our platform which allows you to experience a sense of progress, everyday, as a result of small wins. The more frequently you receive feedback and experience a sense of achievement, the more likely you are to sustain your motivation, creative productivity and keep progressing towards your goal.
Leverage "Been-There, Done-That" Advice
Mentors have been in the same shoes as you. They are currently in a place where you are going, and they know how to get there.
Your mentor helps you:
- Set Goals
- Overcome Setbacks
- Create Good Habits
- Celebrate Milestones
- Achieve Goals
Imagine you were a professional athlete. You have coaches who train you, manage your calendar, keep you in shape, make sure you practice everyday, and make sure you’re taken care of so you can achieve peak performance.
Becoming your best self is hard work, you shouldn’t do it alone. You’re far more likely to be successful with a mentor's support.
Feeling Stuck?
Your mentor will also help you clarify your objectives, and motivate you to keep you on track. They will provide honest feedback to ensure you are always progressing towards your goal, and building confidence along the way.
The Result?
A better job. Faster.
Mentorship Agreement
WeCareer gives you the guide you want and the push you need.
These agreements are there to help deliver measurable insights to mentors to work towards delivering measurable outcomes from mentees.
Mentor’s Services vs. Mentee’s Obligations: Mentorship is a commitment that both parties should take seriously to achieve the end goal.
Mentor's roles and responsibilities
- Act as a role model
- Help mentees define their career path
- Create an action plan to achieve end goal within a time frame
- Break down end goal into milestones and tasks
- Follow up regularly on mentee’s progress and hold them accountable for tasks
- Act as a sounding board, provide constructive, actionable feedback
- Make sure mentees work on the right tasks
- Avoid mistakes and save time
- Criticize behaviours and choices but not persons
- Develop skills, overcome challenges, celebrate milestones, achieve end goal!
Mentee's roles and responsibilities
- Having a mentor doesn’t mean lying on their back
- Make sure you’re committed to end goal and ready to work hard
- Be coachable, actively listen, absorb information mentor shares
- Take lots of notes, reflect back and make sure you understand it, clarify when you don’t
- Take actions, make decisions, complete tasks with quality
- Never be afraid to ask for feedback, listen to and act on feedback without getting defensive
- Respect mentor’s time, avoid being late or no show for meetings, reply to calls or messages promptly,
- Develop skills, overcome challenges, celebrate milestones, achieve end goal!
WeCareer Mentorship Guide
Frequently Asked Questions
WeCareer uses a careful and thorough vetting process to accept only 8% applicants to ensure the highest quality.
Depending on Mentees’ needs, WeCareer mentors provide part or full services to help mentees with:
- Career Positioning
- Testing & Certification
- Resume Building
- Portfolio Building
- Job Searching & Analysis
- Job Networking & Referral
- Interview Scripting
- Interview Practicing
Income Share Agreement (ISA) is an agreement between you and the mentor. The mentor invests in your earning prospects: provides you with career services, develops your employability skills, on the condition that you agree to pay a share of your future income as the mentorship fee.
For illustration purpose, assuming the mentor helps you land an offer that pays $60,000 (>$55,000). The mentorship fee plus tax is: $60,000 x 14% x 1.13 = $9,492, to be paid by 4 instalments of $2,373 in 4 consecutive months after the start date.
Every mentorship is unique, successful mentorships share some characteristics: mutual respect, a two-way professional relationship, both parties are invested in mentee’s success, personal connection, look for similarities in beliefs and values, shared passion, educational background, career path, hometown, communication and listening, constructive feedback and active listening, realistic expectations, agree on realistic expectations for outcomes of relationship, look for similarities, commit to the process, set goals, build trust through personal connection, establish a communication cadence.
Tips and tricks relevant to work and workflow, gold nugget of inside information, immediate feedback, heartfelt support.
You know you are selling and the product is you. You need to become super competitive and super expressive. Mentors brings out the best in Mentees. Mentors have insider information about the employer unavailable to the public. Mentors hold you accountable and accelerate learning and improvement. Good Mentors are hard to find.
There have always been demand for data roles, but data exploded in 2015 when free open source software and cloud computing made the cost of collecting, processing and communicating data so cheap that it became “retail”. Basically, everyone could suddenly afford it.
Consumers, businesses, and economies are all going digital. Digital transformation, automation and AI are seeing massive adoption and are all data driven. Data roles are in high demand, have high impact, offer high salaries and are “future-proof” meaning they will always be relevant.
Not necessarily.
If you understand supply and demand, you’ll understand that with the heavy demand of the data industry comes high wages. With high wages, come many suitors (or supply).
Therefore, the competition is fierce. There are some data jobs that are easier to acquire than others, but generally there is a strong competitive element to landing these roles.
Sounds discouraging, right? It doesn’t have to.
You can give yourself a competitive advantage by focusing on the skills that will actually get you hired.
There are so many applicants to every position that it is easy to get lost in the shuffle. At WeCareer, we focus on making you stand out to the employer, and equipping you with the tools to land and succeed in interviews while sharpening your hard skills as well.
Business Analysts, Data Analysts, Business Intelligence
Analysts, Data Scientists, Machine Learning Engineers, Artificial Intelligence Engineers; Cloud Architects,
Cloud Engineers, Data Engineers, DataOps Engineers.
What position do you play? Who are your suppliers?
Who are your customers?
The GDP’s by industry in descending order are: Real Estate, Manufacturing, Banking and
Insurance, Retail, Health Care, Education, Supply Chain.
Toronto is the 4th largest tech hub in North
America, after San Francisco, Seattle and Washington DC. Toronto attracts tech companies such as Apple,
Amazon and Google. It is common to work remotely for US companies from Toronto.
Business Analysts, Data Analysts, and Business Intelligence Analysts: 55k-85k
Data Scientists and Data Engineers: 75-100K
Artificial Intelligence Engineers: $150k
Salary always depends on level of skills and range of expertise
notice that we didn’t say degrees and experience**
Totally. We recommend setting your sights on Business Analyst, Data Analyst, or Business Intelligence Analyst positions to start. The truth is, nobody has it all. STEM or FABE majors have their own strengths and weaknesses.
Remember: Data is not IT – The data department is the middle office – between business (front office) and IT (back office).
Don’t forget:
Data’s purpose is to serve business, and BA-DA-BI professionals work horizontally (front-to-back and back-to-front).
CRM, Digital Marketing, Retail, eCommerce and Supply Chain.
This is where you see massive adoption of data transformation, automation and AI. These roles are easy to understand and easy to get into.
Absolutely not.
Don’t get us wrong, colleges and universities are certainly helpful in teaching theory and preparing you to some degree for the workforce. However, a commitment of 4 or more years and thousands of dollars seems incredibly daunting, discouraging, and frankly, isn’t necessary.
Employers are looking for people who can perform the tasks required to fulfill their positions. They want employees who provide value to the company.
In other words, if you can learn the skills, write an effective resume, pass the interview, and perform the job, you can get hired.
To sharpen your skills, or learn a new skillset, check out WeCloudData
Most qualified candidates struggle more with their job search and interview process than they do sharpening their skills.
That’s where we come in. Our mission and guarantee at WeCareer is to land qualified candidates jobs.
People say things like,
“Applying for jobs online is like screaming into a black hole”
We’ve all been frustrated by the lack of responses from online job searches. Have you ever asked yourself why this happens? You certainly won’t be receiving an email from the hiring manager explaining why they didn’t select you.
There are many reasons. You must know what is not before you know what it is. In other words, you need to fix the things you’re doing wrong before anyone notices what you’re doing right.
Did you apply to the right jobs, the right way? How many new jobs are you applying to per week? Are you applying early enough? Often enough? Was your resume up to standard? If you did get an interview, would you know what to do?
Answering these questions might seem overwhelming, but our professionals are here to guide you through a plan that guarantees your success.
Programming (SQL, Python)
Visualization (Tableau,Power BI)
Database (MySQL, SQL Server)
Cloud Computing (AWS, Azure, GCP)
Machine Learning (ScikitLearn, Tensorflow)
Project Management (SDLC, Agile)
If I were to ask you, between a fork and a spoon – which is better? What would you say?
You might say it’s a dumb question, because the answer depends on context. What problem are you trying to solve?
Are you eating a noodles, soup, or a steak? It would be better if you had both a fork and spoon so you’re prepared for anything, but you might need chopsticks or a knife as well. Maybe you’re drinking a milkshake, and all you need is a straw.
Skills are like tools, and the tools you need depend on the task. Each role in data comes with it’s own skillset, and you should find the one that suits you best.
One thing is for sure: you don’t need to go back to school to get a formal degree.
In fact, schools are too slow to respond to any real-world challenges. Getting a data role requires a bit of luck. You create your own luck:
Readiness + Opportunity = Bootcamp + Mentorship
We recommend role-based training. This will allow you to learn skills in context and understand how your role fits into the big picture.
Process (ITTO):
Input > Tools & Techniques > Output
The short answer is yes.
Your mentor will do anything and everything they can do to get you hired. However, you will have to keep up your end of the bargain.
Your success is your mentor’s success. Our mentors are seasoned industry professionals with a passion for teaching and helping the next generation in data. We guarantee mentee satisfaction through our Income Share Agreement, which states that no payment is made until the mentee accepts a position meeting expectations.
Basically, if you don’t get hired, you don’t pay.
This is a risk taken on by WeCareer and our mentors. Therefore, you will be held to an agreed upon standard based on performance and dedication. If you meet the standard your mentor will have every reason to refer you to their extensive network, drastically increasing your chances of getting hired.
Our standards are not set too high, we basically ask that you show up and try your hardest. You will experience challenges, bumps in the road and setbacks. This is perfectly normal. We only ask for your honest effort and commitment
If you show up, try hard, and work towards your goal you will open the door to life changing opportunities through your mentor’s network. This is an invaluable asset that 99% of newcomers to the industry don’t have access to.
