Would you take on a mentee?

I empathize with junior or inexperienced candidates entering the current engineering job market - it's tough out there.

This feeling may be especially compounded for me as I run a training platform for engineers (clientside.dev), and I interact with up-and-coming engineers daily on TikTok (@clientside.dev).

I'm currently taking mentees to give them real-world experience that they can put on their resumes, and I have a hunch that many other indie hackers here may be willing to take on mentees of their own to help with their side projects.

I think the only problem for us as mentors is we'd still like to be somewhat picky about who we spend our precious time mentoring and don't want to deal with the hassle of vetting them.

We barely have time for our projects as it stands.

I have the following solution in mind (I'm open to other suggestions)

I vet the candidates by personally working with them to ensure they have a base set of skills, whether that's by ensuring they've completed a set of criteria (i.e., completed full-stack projects of a certain caliber, completed a certain amount of questions on Clientside, passed a test we give them, etc.,)
I think the vetting process should be rigid and one we can agree on as a community so this will be worked out over time.

On the flip side, as a mentor, I'd expect you to have a well-defined project ready for the candidates.

I then match you up with candidates who seem to be a good fit for those projects.

I think this can be a mutually beneficial agreement.

• You get someone highly willing and grateful to help you with your project in return for your mentorship.
• They get real-world bullet points for their resume and increase their odds in this scary job market.

What do you think?