Navigating the complexities of the tech industry requires more than just skill and knowledge; it often demands the guiding hand of a mentor. Greta Alsytė, the Head of Revenue Operations at Oxylabs and a mentor in Back-end Development in 2023, exemplifies this guiding light with her extensive experience and commitment to nurturing emerging talent.

What drove you to become a mentor?

My decision to become a mentor is based on personal experience. Sometimes, everyone feels lost in the early stages of their career. When I remember that time, I would really appreciate it if I had a professional’s guidance on navigating the right direction.

Now, armed with tech industry experience, I am driven to share my knowledge & help mentees move forward with their career goals. As a mentor, my goal is to provide guidance, advice, and motivation, helping them navigate their own paths and achieve their professional goals.

What advice would you give to new mentors, and is there a mentorship myth you’d like to dispel?

Advice to mentors: Focus on the mentee’s needs rather than telling them what you think they need. Share personal experiences, success stories, and failures. Real-life examples can help the mentee understand that everyone is going through their own struggles. Encourage independence: Guide the mentee toward independent thinking and problem-solving.

Dispel: Mentors are not expected to know everything; every mentoring experience is a learning journey for both mentor & mentee. 

What would be your advice to those who are considering becoming a mentor?

Don’t be afraid; try it out and do it. It will require additional time, and additional effort from you, but it will also benefit you, giving additional opportunities to look at yourself, to look at your organizational setup, at your ways of working, and find new connections, so that’s always a good thing to do.

What are the top three things you learned from mentoring? 

Adaptability: adapt to different communication styles, learning preferences & feedback giving. 

Encouragement: providing supportive guidance to inspire the mentee’s confidence and foster their personal and professional growth.

Goal setting: collaboratively defining clear, specific, and measurable short-term objectives & following them till the end of mentorship. 

Can you share a mentee success story, and how did seeing that success make you feel?

In my role as a mentor, one particularly gratifying experience involved supporting a mentee through a business analysis task. Throughout the learning process, mistakes naturally occurred, but what stood out was the mentees’ commitment to improvement after receiving feedback. 

It was a rewarding moment, realizing that the guidance provided had contributed to her progress. This experience reminded me of the impact mentorship can have on someone’s development. Witnessing mentees’ success served as a gentle reminder of the meaningful journey we undertake together in mentorship.

Take on the challenge of helping women transition to tech and grow professionally and personally. Become a mentor.