VOLUME 11, NO. 1     MAY 1997

DuPont mentor engineers success

Back in the 1970s, when Rich Ventre '74 graduated and joined DuPont, he was part of a tide of new recruits, innocent of the corporate world. A recruiting coordinator was assigned full time to his location to look after the rookies and help them assimilate. "Today, a site that size might hire only one or two entry-level engineers a year," says Ventre. He suggests that the kind of support he experienced as a new hire now requires a more formal approach, such as a mentoring program.

Ventre, a longtime mentor at DuPont, and his mentoree, Justin Blount, were featured in Graduating Engineer magazine last year. Their story clearly illustrates that mentoring is a win-win-win situation, benefiting the mentor, the mentoree and the corporation. "Most of the mentorees at DuPont don't have problems with the engineering aspect of their jobs," Ventre contends. "Justin and I hardly ever talked about things from a technical perspective." Where mentoring can help is in the subtleties:

understanding how a company's hierarchy works, for example, or appreciating the nuances of the corporate culture. "What might have been appropriate at college or even at another corporation isn't going to work here," says Ventre. Knowing how to interface with superiors, or how to present one's idea effectively, can make or break a career. "Making those little tweaks in performance early on solves a lot of small problems that could become bigger problems later."

A mentor can help a new employee learn who does what in an organization, what resources and training are available, and how to go about an assignment. Ventre readily shares a gaffe from early in his career, when he wasted two weeks designing a heat recovery system that the company's CAD software could have drawn up in hours. "If I were to leave DuPont tomorrow and go to another chemical company, I would have to learn the same things. Of course, with 22 years of experience, I would probably have an easier time asking the right questions and tracking down the information," he adds.

Other aspects of the mentoring relationship are what you might expect from advising a 23-year-old who is handling his first full-time job. Ventre has counseled Blount on buying a car, furnishing his apartment, setting up financial investments, and even making the decision to get engaged. "How did you know that you were ready to get married?" was a question that evolved naturally as their relationship transcended work and grew into a big-brother, or even a parental mode.

"I view my mentoring relationship as having been really good for me," says Ventre. "Most mentors I talk to have come to view the other person as a close personal friend, besides helping them become a better employee. It also forces you to re-visit what you did 20 years ago and never had the occasion to think about again. You re-examine why you do what you do - and sometimes a mentoree challenges you and helps you come up with better ways of doing your own job."

Joan Killough-Miller

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