Tell me about a time where you mentored a colleague
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What is this question about
Interviewers use this question to assess whether you can help another person grow, not just perform a one-off task. They want to understand how you diagnose someone else's needs, adapt your approach, invest over time, and measure whether your support actually made a difference. At higher levels, they are also looking for whether your mentoring scales beyond ad hoc help into team or organizational leverage.
“Can you give me an example of someone you helped develop?”
“Tell me about a time you coached a teammate through something they were struggling with.”
“Describe a situation where you helped a less experienced colleague grow.”
“Who have you mentored recently, and what did you do for them?”
“Walk me through a time when your guidance helped another engineer become more effective.”
Key Insights
- You should make the other person's starting point and needs legible. Mentoring is not just 'I explained something'; strong answers show that you understood what they were struggling with and adjusted your approach accordingly.
- Don't stop at the teaching moment. The strongest answers show a loop: you noticed a need, helped in a targeted way, followed up, and saw evidence that the person became more capable or independent.
- For senior and above, simple knowledge transfer is usually not enough. You should show leverage: mentoring that improved another engineer's judgment, confidence, autonomy, or broader team effectiveness.
What interviewers probe atlevel
Top Priority
Even as a junior engineer, a good mentoring story should show that you helped someone learn how to proceed next time, not just rescued them once.
Good examples
🟢I helped a teammate debug a failing test, but instead of just pointing out the bug, I walked through the steps I use to narrow down failures and then had them try the same method on the next one.
🟢A newer engineer asked me several questions about our release checklist, so I created a short guide with the reasoning behind each step and asked them to run the next release while I observed in case they got stuck.
Bad examples
🔴Whenever my teammate got stuck, I would usually hop on a call and fix the issue with them so they could keep going. They appreciated how responsive I was.
🔴I mentored an intern by reviewing their work very closely and giving them the exact changes to make each time, which helped them get through the project.
Weak answers make the mentee reliant on the candidate; strong answers transfer a method, framework, or confidence that the mentee can reuse.
You don't need huge business impact at junior level, but you should be able to point to real signs that the person improved.
Good examples
🟢After a couple of sessions, the teammate was able to run the setup on a fresh machine without my help and later updated the onboarding notes themselves.
🟢The intern I mentored went from asking me to diagnose each bug to bringing me a narrowed-down hypothesis and evidence, which showed they were applying the method independently.
Bad examples
🔴They thanked me and said it was helpful, so I know the mentoring went well.
🔴After I helped them, things seemed smoother and I felt like they were more comfortable.
Weak answers rely on gratitude or vibes; strong answers give observable evidence of increased capability.
Valuable
A surprisingly strong junior answer shows follow-through: you didn't just help once and disappear.
Good examples
🟢After I walked a teammate through our test setup, I checked in the next week when they had to use it again. They still had one confusing step, so I updated the guide and tried it with them a second time.
🟢I helped an intern with how to investigate bugs, and when I noticed they were still jumping to conclusions, I did one more session using a different example and had them lead the thinking this time.
Bad examples
🔴I explained the process to them once, and after that I assumed they had it because they didn't ask many more questions.
🔴I sent a teammate some notes on how I handle debugging and considered the mentoring complete after that.
Weak answers treat mentoring as a single explanation; strong answers show repetition, adjustment, and follow-up.
Junior candidates are not expected to have formal mentees; a strong answer can be peer mentoring or helping a newer teammate in a focused way.
Good examples
🟢I mentored an intern over a few weeks on how to investigate bugs in a small feature area we both worked in. It was still a limited scope, but I was consistently the person helping them build confidence in that space.
🟢A new teammate joined the part of the codebase I knew best, and I helped them ramp up through a few sessions on setup, debugging, and release basics. It was a small story, but it was real mentoring within my scope.
Bad examples
🔴I mentored a colleague by answering a quick question about a command they forgot. It only took a minute, but I think it showed I like helping people.
🔴I don't formally mentor people yet, but I once sent someone a link to documentation when they were blocked.
Weak answers pick examples too trivial to demonstrate mentoring; strong answers choose modest but real development support appropriate for a junior engineer.
Example answers atlevel
Great answers
On my last team, an intern was contributing to a small feature in an area I had worked on a lot, and I noticed they were getting stuck whenever a test failed. Instead of just fixing the failures with them, I asked them to show me how they were debugging so I could understand where the process was breaking down. I realized they were making guesses too early, so I walked them through a simple step-by-step way to narrow down the issue and then had them try it on the next failure while I watched. I checked in again the following week, and they were able to come to me with a likely root cause and evidence instead of just saying the test was broken. By the end of the internship, they were debugging most issues on their own and even added a note to our team onboarding doc with the approach that had helped them.
A new product analyst on my team needed to produce weekly funnel reports but had limited experience writing SQL against our production schema, which was intimidating for them. I offered to run three short pairing sessions where I explained the most important tables, showed safe ways to run queries against a read-only replica, and walked through a few common mistakes that caused incorrect results. After each session I gave them a small exercise and a template query they could reuse, and I reviewed their first few reports with constructive comments. I also created a one-page cheat sheet with the standard joins and date functions we use. Within a month they were independently shipping accurate dashboards, and they later caught a data regression themselves that saved us from making a bad product decision. The experience felt rewarding because I helped a teammate be confident and reduce our reliance on engineers for routine analytics.
Poor answers
I mentored a teammate who was new to our service by answering a lot of questions for them. They would message me when something wasn't working, and I usually knew the answer right away, so I could get them unstuck quickly. I also showed them the commands I normally use and pointed them to some files to look at. After that they seemed much more comfortable, so I think it went well.
Question Timeline
See when this question was last asked and where, including any notes left by other candidates.
Early July, 2026
Sprinter Health
Senior
Late June, 2026
Staff
Mid June, 2026
Confluent
Staff
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