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Personal Progress and Prospect: Early Career Support • 161

goes through a five-bullet checklist, and when the meeting is over he goes
to his own development plan and checks off that he has conducted the
meeting so that he meets his own performance objectives. Since the men-
tor is supposed to be in contact with the new hire’s manager, Robert’s men-
tor sends an email to the manager, yet when he does not receive a
response, he fails to follow up.
Unfortunately, that’s not all Robert’s mentor fails to do. Even though
he overheard Robert complaining in the firm’s cafeteria about something
unreasonable Robert perceived his boss doing, Robert’s mentor neglects
to talk about it in the mentor meeting because he’s relying exclusively on
what the five bullets tell him. The mentor is totally unengaged, and so too
is Robert. He does not get any real support and ends up with a very nega-
tive performance evaluation from his manager four months later. In addi-
tion, he feels turned off and isolated in his huge company. If his mentoring
interaction had been more authentic, his mentor would have tried to reach
his manager until he succeeded. He would have talked with Robert about
the negative feedback he’d received from his manager, reviewed the deliv-
erable that had received the criticism, explained the feedback to him, and
reached out to the manager to let him know that Robert was working to
improve.
So how do you begin to make systemic mentoring authentic? For starters,
photocopy this story and share it with your mentors. Put them on notice of
what poor mentoring looks like. Establish a standard of quality that you
would expect from your company’s manufacturing line. Great companies
produce great product because they genuinely care. The same needs to be
done for mentoring and all other service elements of onboarding.

Best Principle #3: “Amp up” the performance review process during
the first year.
While increasing the frequency and breadth of new hire evaluations
requires the expenditure of additional resources, it can serve as a strong
career support mechanism. Early evaluations can offer new hires an initial
sense of accomplishment, something that is particularly important to
younger employees. One approach is to offer reviews at the 30-day, 100-day,
six-month, and one-year points. But note that the title of this chapter and
the label for this pillar is Early Career Support, not Early Career Judgment.