Last weekend I was privileged to be asked to perform a mock interview for a neighbor and friend’s high school son.  I say privilege, because it truly felt like an honor.  Here I was dressed up in my best circa 1970s white shirt and tie, pocket protector, white sox, black slacks; the only thing missing was some tape on the bridge of my glasses and a paperclip used to repair one of the hinges. 

Yup, I looked like a real geek compared to today’s standards.  I looked like, well, I looked like my first real engineering boss.  The guy that took advantage of my youthful enthusiasm for engineering assigned me to almost every project he had in his department, and paid me next to nothing for it.  I had to have been the worst paid engineer in the company.  At least that’s what it looked like on paper when I compared salaries with other’s in the corporation.

However, looking back like some old geezer saying “In my day…”  These were some of the best days of my career.  I had a mentor –throughout my career of had some real great mentors—that was also my boss. You could say that he overworked me, having me do the legwork on almost every project in his department and in many instances do the entire job just signing his name to the project.  At the time I didn’t see it that way, though some of my peers did.  I thought this had to be the coolest job in the world.  I get to try things out, learn, design and build stuff that the corporation was actually going to use; not only use but depend upon for its very survival.  How many starting engineers can say that for a first assignment?

During my lunches when I wasn’t grabbing a quick sandwich running to my next meeting across the corporate campus, I would sit down with several of my peers some older, some the same age.  The older ones would just smile when us newbies would talk about our work and my same-age peers would tell me “man you’re being taken advantage of big time” and for peanuts.  Despite my enthusiastic defense about how much I was learning the exposure to executive management, I still seemed to lose out on the discussion as I was not getting paid as well and was working twice as hard for what I was getting.  Meanwhile my older peers would say nothing and just smile quietly and eat their sandwiches from the lunch wagon.

Fast forward four years later, my same-age peers had peaked out in their careers and salary.  They were still working the same job, be it a larger scope.  I had left for another company and then left to form my own consulting firm.  My net profit was now 3x – 4x what my peers were pulling home.  Did I give them a horselaugh?  Had I stopped to think about it maybe I should have, however, I was still learning, growing and too busy working on interesting projects to care.

The point of all this is not suffer early and you’ll make more money later; though that seems to be the inferred lesson. 

There is an Old Russian fable about a baby bird caught in the cold, separated from its mother, freezing and starving.  A poor peasant finds it and carefully places it into some fresh manure to keep it warm. As the baby bird starts to recover, it starts chipping. The chipping attracts a wolf that digs it out of the manure and eats it.  The moral of the fable is that those that put you in manure are not necessarily your enemies and those that dig you out are not necessarily your friends.

What I came away with this morning during my mock interview was that I was being asked to really help this young man succeed in his chosen profession.  I could have looked at his resume’ which didn’t really give you any impression he had a desire or gift for design, given him a pass on the whole exercise and just short the breeze about engineering in my day –which happened to be an interview one of my peers had once latter on in life—or I could take this as a serious giving of trust.

I put on my best impression of my former mentor and ripped through his resume’, as painful as it was to both of us I dragged out details that he hadn’t captured.  I put him on the spot, asking him why he wanted to be an engineer when rock stars make more money.  I asked him if you wanted to be an engineer why does your resume’ list stock boy as career objective?  I questioned every line on his resume’ asking how does this relate to being an engineer?  Most of his replies were vague and unrelated, it was clear it hadn’t thought out everything regarding interviewing for a job.  But for an early high school student he had at least gotten through the process.  He’d gotten some experience as to what it was like to be interviewed for the job.

His mother had sat in on the interview, half happy at the intensity half in horror at her baby being grilled.  At the end of his mock interview you could see he was glad to just get it over.  He’d completed his assignment and he could go on.  I then switched hat’s much like my mentor\boss did years ago.  Do you want to get some feedback on how you did?  The words sounded so very familiar to me as I was on the opposite side of them now. 

This question was both a test and a gift.  Had I just blew it by when I was younger my mentorship would have ended and my mentor would have considered me not worth the effort to put me through all he was putting me through.  Much to my delight, my neighbor’s son turned around and sat down as intensely as other kids do when they’re involved with their X-box.  I walked him through all the questions I asked; just what I was looking for and what his responses told me about him.  I walked through his resume’ and pointed out where there were serious disconnects between what he wanted and what he expressed or even the manner in which he expressed them.  Even noting box-boy as some summer job could be used to show he had interest in Engineering if he highlighted the right activities and accomplishments.

In the end he walked away not quite on air –neither did I the first feedback session I had—but with a slight smile, like he was just give one of the secrets of a great career.  For me I walked bursting with pride, I felt like I had done my mentors well.  They had passed the baton to me and I didn’t drop it.  This morning as I write this small article I’m looking at how I’m going to make some connections for my engineering protégé, hopefully finding and academic mentor and a possible internship for him as he enters the latter half of high school and looks to enter college.

So I ask you sincerely, If you were lucky enough to have an internship or a mentorship did you consider it a real opportunity or slavery?