Mentors Handbook

You said yes to running a track. That was the hard part, and it is already behind you.

Product Makers is Romania's product community: people who build things and talk honestly about how it actually went. This handbook is for mentors running a group track in the Mentoring Program. What is in here is practice, not policy.

You own the track. The theme, the format, the sessions, how you hold the room. We own the frame. Selection rhythm, the mentee call, tools, and someone to ping when you get stuck.

If you have never run a group before, you are in the usual position. Most first-time mentors turn up convinced everyone else has done this ten times already. They have not.

Dates, open calls and track pages for the current edition are on the mentoring page.

How the learning works

Peer exchange, not corporate training. You teach from what you have lived through, not from a syllabus. Sessions are conversations you facilitate: stories, exercises, real questions from the room. Not lectures.

Your support network

You are not running this alone, and nobody expects you to have it figured out.

• Mentors Slack. First stop for “is this normal?”, for stuck spots, and for ops, tooling and coordination. It is not an announcements channel, it exists so you can ask things and get other mentors' opinions quickly. Use the channel rather than a DM when the answer would help somebody else too.
• Other mentors. Pairing a first-timer with someone who has run a track before happens when it can. Ask if you want it.
• The organising team. Around when you are stuck, and the people to go to for anything that needs a decision above your own track.

Tooling

• Slack. Your main line to organisers and other mentors, and where the wider community lives.
• WhatsApp. Organisers create one empty group per track and send you the link. Do not create your own. Invite accepted mentees into it after decisions, if you use WhatsApp with your cohort.
• Miro, FigJam, or any board you like. For collaborative exercises. Organisers share a working board when you need one.
• Zoom or Google Meet. Free accounts cut a group session short: Zoom at 40 minutes, Meet at 60 minutes once three or more people are in. Neither free plan includes breakout rooms. If your session needs the length or the breakouts, use an account that covers it.

Mission

To create a trusted space where product people exchange real experience honestly, build meaningful relationships, and develop the judgment and agency to keep growing throughout their professional lives.

Product Makers provides the context and brings the right people together. We do not own their growth. Participants remain capable adults, responsible for their choices and for what they do with the experience.

Vision

A Romanian product ecosystem where capable people find their peers, learn openly from one another, and grow together rather than in isolation.

We want to contribute to a professional culture that is less transactional and less zero-sum: one where people share what they know, listen regardless of hierarchy, welcome different perspectives, collaborate when there is shared value, and invest in relationships for the long term.

We want Product Makers Mentorship to remain a place where people can say: “I found my people here.” People they respect. People with experience and integrity. People they can speak openly with. People who challenge them to become better.

Core values

1. Honest exchange. We speak from real experience. We share what worked, what didn't, what we are uncertain about, and what we still don't know. Saying “I don't know” is more valuable than performing expertise. Honest experience is more useful than polished answers.
2. Peer to peer. Everyone in the room is a capable adult. Mentors bring expertise and experience, but they are not above the people they mentor. Their expertise exists in service of the participants and the conversation. We learn with one another, not only from one another.
3. Integrity. We participate in good faith. Mentorship is pro bono and driven by belief in the mission, not by financial gain, personal branding, lead generation, or access to participants. Recognition may follow contribution. It should not be the reason for it.
4. Agency. People are responsible for their own professional lives. The program can provide context, perspectives, relationships, challenge and encouragement. It cannot make decisions or create growth for someone. We treat people as capable of choosing their own direction and acting on it.
5. Growth that compounds. We care about sustainable professional growth, not shortcuts. A good outcome is not simply a promotion, a salary increase or a successful opportunity. Circumstances and luck can create outcomes. We want people to leave with more judgment, skill, confidence, relationships and understanding of the professional world: capabilities they can carry into the next situation and continue building upon.

Principles we protect

• The conversation is the product. The program is built around exchange, not content delivery. A mentoring track should never become primarily a training course or one-to-many lecture.
• Relationships matter as much as information. A successful cohort should create connections worth keeping after the sessions end.
• The room is trusted. People should be able to discuss ambition, money, uncertainty, mistakes, managers, colleagues, career changes and difficult professional situations without performing for an audience. Conversations are intentionally perishable: sessions are not content to be recorded and repurposed. What is said in a session stays in a session. The things people actually need to say out loud are “I don't get on with my boss”, “I can't stand product management any more”, “I want to go and work on a farm”.
• Mentors use judgment. There is no single correct mentoring method. A mentor may ask, advise, share an experience, challenge directly, or sometimes allow someone to learn through experience. The goal is the participant's progress, not adherence to a facilitation doctrine.
• Expertise serves the experience. Mentors must have meaningful experience in the subjects they mentor. Beyond that threshold, prestige is less important than honesty, judgment, curiosity and the ability to engage with others as peers.
• Quality before scale. We would rather create a small, intimate experience with excellent people and meaningful relationships than reach more people by turning mentorship into content consumption.

Hard rule: never record a session.

What a mentoring track actually is

A series of 3 to 5 interactive sessions, each 1.5 to 2 hours, around a topic you know from practice. You facilitate a conversation and let people learn from each other. You are not delivering content from the front of the room.

Your job, short version:

• Guide, do not lecture
• Put engagement and peer problem-solving ahead of coverage
• Balance a short insight, an exercise, and a lot of discussion
• Hold a space where people can say the real thing

Group size is 5 to 15 people, and it varies from track to track. Breakouts need around eight before they work properly, so on a smaller group plan for full-room discussion instead.

Habits that make a track land

• Real cases and the frameworks you genuinely use, not the ones you read about
• Breakouts, so the quiet people get a turn
• A shared board when the work is collaborative
• Quick feedback after each session, used before the next one
• No recording

What to avoid

• A deck as the main event
• Theory with nowhere to land
• Content built for a generic audience rather than the people actually in front of you
• Homework heavy enough to become a reason not to come back. Optional reading is fine

What mentors get back

Nobody does this for one reason, but the same few keep coming back in the feedback.

• Contribution. Handing what you learned the hard way to somebody hitting it for the first time. There are not many chances to be that directly useful.
• A room that pushes back. Your material is one thing. A dozen people with opinions is another. You find out how well you know something when somebody asks the question you had skipped over.
• Your own learning. Teaching forces you to organise what you know, and the group brings problems you have not seen.
• Facilitation practice. A room of up to fifteen people, live, for six weeks. Hard to get that anywhere else without a job title attached to it.
• The people. Other mentors, the mentees, and organisers who all want product work in Romania to get better.

If you are doubting yourself

Almost every mentor does, including the ones who have run several tracks already.

Worth noticing where the pressure comes from. The moment you picture yourself at the front of the room delivering, you put the whole weight on your own shoulders: build the materials, be sophisticated, have an answer ready. Facilitating a conversation is a different job and a much lighter one. The group did not come for a performance. They came to hear how it actually goes from somebody a few steps ahead. That you already have.

Where dates live

The calendar for the current edition is on the mentoring page. Use that, plus the emails and Luma invites already in your inbox, for:

• Mentors kickoff
• Facilitation training, which is optional and usually announced in Slack and Luma rather than on the timeline
• When track outlines and session dates are due
• Call for mentees, open and close
• Mentees kickoff
• When you send accept and reject emails
• The session window
• Feedback and wrap-up

If something in Slack disagrees with the website, ask in the mentors Slack. Then treat the corrected website, or an explicit organiser message, as the one that counts.

The rhythm, without dates

Every edition follows roughly the same shape. The exact days move. The sequence does not.

1. Mentors selected, then kickoff, then tracks defined
2. Facilitation training, optional and worth it
3. You submit your track description and session times so mentees can choose
4. Call for mentees, mentees kickoff, then you pick your group
5. You send accept and reject emails on decision day
6. Sessions run for about six weeks
7. Feedback and wrap-up. How the two surveys work is in Feedback collection

What you owe before the mentee call opens

The exact deadline is on the website and in Slack for this edition. The list itself does not change:

• Track title, short, around 5 to 6 words
• Short description, one sentence
• Longer description
• What you will discuss
• Who it is for, and who it is not for
• Session dates and times
• Profile bits organisers still need from you: photo, LinkedIn, bio

Getting this in on time is what lets mentees pick properly. If your track is not up when the call goes live, they choose from the ones that are.

One thing people miss

Mentee decision emails are sent by the track mentors, from your own inbox, using the templates in this handbook. Organisers do not send those for you. If that is new information, read Telling mentees yes and no before decision day rather than on it.

Mentees can apply to two tracks at most. That is how the forms work. If someone is in on one track and out on the other, organisers tell both mentors before the emails go out, so the yes is sent first. You still write and send your own email.

Picking your theme

Start from where your stories are, not from what sounds impressive. The tracks that land are the ones where the mentor has scars: the launch that went sideways, the stakeholder who would not budge, the hiring loop you fixed after getting it wrong twice.

Organisers do not impose an edition theme. A per-edition theme was tried in the past and dropped, because authenticity beat coherence. Nobody is going to tell you your topic is too narrow. Narrow is usually better.

The more senior you are, the harder this gets. You have more to say, so choosing is worse, not easier. If you are stuck, it is not a sign you have nothing. It is a sign you have too much.

A useful test: pick the place where your best stories are, where your confidence is complete, and where you still feel something about it. That is where a track gets good.

Partnering for impact

Plenty of the best tracks are led by two people. Three mentors per track is the maximum. Four makes alignment slow and the visuals crowded. Running solo is completely fine if that is how you work best.

What a partner gets you:

• More perspectives in the room, and shared prep
• A second pair of hands when the discussion drifts
• Someone to hand the room to when your session runs out of road

Align early on the content flow and who leads which session. Bringing a guest in for one deep dive is fine. Keep the room a mentoring conversation, not a speaker series.

Track outline

• About 6 weeks, 3 to 5 sessions, 1.5 to 2 hours each
• In Romanian, fully online. Fixed for every track, not something you pick
• 5 to 15 people, varying by track, and that is fine. See What good mentoring looks like for what the size changes about facilitation
• With a duo or trio, sessions are usually led in turns. Make them connect, so it reads as one track and not three
• Each session: a short agenda, then mostly discussion, exercises, questions

Facilitation training

Most editions include a practical facilitation session for mentors. Optional, and genuinely worth the time if holding a group is new for you. It is also the cheapest way to stop worrying about whether you will be any good at this.

It is built to be inspiration rather than instruction, so experienced facilitators get something out of it too. Several mentors treat it as a refresher rather than a lesson. When and where: the mentoring page and the Luma invite for this edition.

What to publish for mentees

Mentees choose from this. Short and concrete is what makes the choice possible.

• Track title, short
• One-sentence description
• A slightly longer description, still only a few sentences
• What you will actually discuss: situations, not themes
• Who it is for, and who it is not for
• Session dates and times, before the mentee call opens

Check the website and mentors Slack for this edition's deadline.

A structure that works

Session 1: foundation and connection. Introductions, expectations, an overview of the track, and how you will keep in touch between sessions (the WhatsApp group from organisers, if you use one). Relationships first. The rest goes better afterwards.

Sessions 2 to 5: the core. The pattern that works: a story, then an exercise in small teams, then a follow-up discussion. People are coming to you after a full working day, and a session built only on input loses them. Spend more than half the time on discussion and problem-solving rather than input. Keep the last ten minutes or so for quick feedback you can use next week. Extra reading outside sessions is fine. Heavy homework is not, and it tends to thin the room.

Timing, from experience

• Mid-day: people are focused, but they leave hard when work calls them back
• Evening: more room for questions, more life noise competing with you
• Morning: can work well. Keep it to 1.5 hours

If signups feel slow

Waiting to see who picks your track is the uncomfortable part, and every mentor feels it.

Here is what organisers have watched happen across several editions: in the first few days, some tracks look like nobody wants them. By the close, the distribution across tracks is good. The very popular tracks end up with the biggest groups, and the ones that looked quiet still land around eight to ten people. A thin first week is not a verdict.

The part that is in your hands: recruiting is yours too, and we encourage it. Organisers run the Call for Mentees and promote it through the community LinkedIn, but a lot of mentees find a track because its mentor posted about it. There is no big push for volume, on purpose.

So share the track in your own network and say so in the mentors Slack. More applicants means more to choose from at selection, and a group closer to the one you had in mind. There is a ready-made post in Promote your track.

A rehearsal checklist for the short talk you give when people are choosing a track. Speak to what they walk away with, not to how you will run the hour. Lead with what is in it for them. Keep it to about 3 minutes, and stop while they still want more.

Use your own voice. The shape below is a way in if you are stuck. Change the words so they sound like you.

The order

Hook, then roadmap, then who you are, then who it is for, then the logistics.

1. Hook, one to two sentences. The change you are offering, and an invite.
2. Roadmap, three to four bullets. What you will actually cover. Situations, not a syllabus.
3. Who you are. Your name, what you do now, and one proof point.
4. Who it is for. Level (junior, mid, senior), the mindset, and what showing up asks of them.
5. Logistics. Format, dates and times, how often you meet.

[The change, in one or two sentences. Then the invite.]

What we'll actually work on:
- [Situation]
- [Situation]
- [Situation]

I'm [NAME], [WHAT YOU DO NOW]. [One proof point.]

This is for [LEVEL] who [MINDSET]. What it asks of you: [COMMITMENT].

[FORMAT]. [DATES AND TIMES]. [HOW OFTEN].

Recruiting is part of the job, and we encourage it. Organisers run the Call for Mentees and promote it through the community LinkedIn, but a lot of mentees find a track because its mentor posted about it. There is no big push for volume, on purpose.

Your post reaches people who already trust you, which the program account cannot do. More applicants means more to select from at decision time, and a group closer to the one you had in mind.

Use your own voice. The template is a way in if you are stuck. Change the words so they sound like you. A post in your own voice is the point.

Language. English is the recommendation. After that, use whatever the people you are writing to will actually read.

The shape

Six moves, in this order. The order matters: proof and fit come before the ask.

1. Open on the problem, from your own experience. Never on the announcement.
2. Say what the track is, and who you are running it with.
3. Three concrete things you will actually work on. Not themes, situations.
4. Who it is for, and who it is not for. The second half is what makes the first half believable.
5. Name the doubt. Most people who would be good in your room assume they are not far enough along.
6. Practical, then one ask. Sessions, format, that it costs nothing, deadline, link.

Length: 150 to 300 words. Under 150 usually means nothing concrete made it in.

If you have run a track before, add a seventh move. One line from a past mentee, with their name and what actually changed for them, is the strongest thing you can put in a post here. Not praise for you, the change for them. Ask them first, and tag them. A returning mentor who skips this is leaving the best card in the deck unplayed.

[One line about the problem, from your own experience.
Something you have watched go wrong, or a question you keep being asked.]

[One line on why you are doing something about it now.]

I'm running [TRACK TITLE] in the Product Makers mentoring program
this autumn[, with [CO-MENTOR NAME]].

What we'll actually work on:
→ [Concrete situation, not a theme]
→ [Concrete situation, not a theme]
→ [Concrete situation, not a theme]

It's for [WHO IT IS FOR]. It's not for [WHO IT IS NOT FOR], and saying
that plainly saves us both time.

[Name the doubt. Something like: if you're wondering whether you're far
enough along for this, that's the wrong question. Bring one real
situation you're stuck on and you'll get plenty out of it.]

[N] sessions, [1.5 to 2] hours each, online, over about six weeks.
It costs nothing. Product Makers has always been free and it stays free.

Applications close [DATE]. Pick your track here -> [LINK]

Every few weeks someone messages me asking how to get their first
product role. I have been answering that question one coffee at a time
for about four years, and I give a slightly worse answer every time,
because I am repeating myself.

So this autumn I am doing it properly, with a group.

I'm running Starting a Career in Product in the Product Makers
mentoring program.

What we'll actually work on:
→ What the job looks like on a normal Tuesday, not what the job ads say
→ Reading a role ad and working out whether it is worth your evening
→ The interview questions people actually get, and what a good answer
  sounds like

It's for people trying to move into product from somewhere else. It's
not for PMs with a few years behind them who want to go deeper, and
saying that plainly saves us both time.

If you're wondering whether you're far enough along for this: that's
the wrong question. Bring one real situation you're stuck on. That is
the whole entry requirement.

Four sessions, two hours each, online, over about six weeks. It costs
nothing. Product Makers has always been free and it stays free.

Applications close [DATE]. Pick your track here -> [LINK]

Rules worth keeping

• No em dash. Comma, colon, or full stop.
• Say it is free, plainly, next to the ask. Not buried at the bottom, and never softened into discount language.
• One ask. Two calls to action usually get neither.
• Tag your co-mentors and anyone else you name.
• Bullets: the program glyph for points, • for people and quotes, ✨ if you list tracks. Never a plain hyphen.
• Emoji: two to five, each one doing a job.
• Hashtags are optional. Three to five, or none at all. If you use them, #ProductMentoring and #ProductManagement come first.

Do not

• Open with “I am excited to announce”.
• Manufacture scarcity. “Only 3 spots left” is not how this program talks. A real deadline is fine.
• Promise outcomes you cannot control, like landing a role.
• List your credentials before the problem. The reader cares about their own situation first.
• Describe the track as a course, a curriculum, or a cohort. It is a conversation you facilitate.

Visual

Organisers give you a track card. Use that. Do not make your own image. If the card is not ready, post without it. A good post with no image beats a late post.

Everyone who applied to your track gets an email. You send it yourself, from your own inbox, on decision day. The date is on the mentoring page. Write it in your own voice. A short letter from you is the point.

When you say yes

• Say that you chose them for the group.
• Say what the sessions are: real situations from their work, not a course.
• Ask them to reply with one sentence about what they are stuck on right now.
• Ask them to tell you early if they already know they will miss a session.
• Put the practical details at the end: session times, where you meet online, and how you will stay in touch.

When you say no

• Say it plainly, near the start.
• You can say there were more applications than places, and that the group had to stay small enough for everyone to speak.
• Do not praise the application and then decline it.
• Point them to the community, and invite them to apply again next edition.
• If they also have a place on another track, say so. Mentees can apply to two tracks at most. Organisers tell both mentors the order, so the yes goes out before the no.

What to leave out

• A script that does not sound like you.
• The word “accepted”, which makes everyone else sound as if they failed a test.
• Dates you are not sure of.
• Silence. No applicant should hear nothing.

Small things, learned the expensive way by mentors before you.

Building connections

• A casual meetup early on changes the whole track. After it, you are not strangers taking turns to speak.
• Open the first session with people, not with the agenda. Who they are, what they are stuck on, then expectations.

Running good sessions

• A group holds different kinds of energy: the people who talk and the people who are listening hard. Both are participating.
• Less theory, more stories. Real examples, questions, and room for mentees to bring their own situations.
• Balance the voices. Breakouts are the simplest way to hear from the quiet half of the room.
• Never record a session. It is what keeps people willing to say the uncomfortable thing.

Preparation and flow

• Get calendars blocked early. On decision day, while you are already in their inbox, send accepted mentees calendar invites for every session. A date sitting in an email gets overwritten by something else. A date in someone's calendar survives.
• Send a short agenda beforehand. It takes five minutes and people arrive ready.
• Leave breathing room. A good discussion is worth more than the slides you did not get to.
• Collect quick feedback at the end of each session and use it on the next one. Mentees notice when you do. That check is yours. The edition surveys organisers send are in Feedback collection.

When a session goes badly

It happens. Low energy, thin discussion, a topic that did not land. Say so out loud in the next session and ask what they need instead. Mentees remember the mentor who asked.

Two surveys each edition, from organisers. One is for you. One is for your mentees, and you are the person who gets them to fill it in.

This is separate from the quick check you run at the end of a session for your own next one. That one stays yours. These two are how the program learns.

From you

Organisers send you the survey. You do not build it.

• About two weeks in. So we can tell whether the support around your track needs to change while there is still time.
• The last week. So the next edition can use what this one actually taught us.

From your mentees

Organisers build one survey for every track. Answers land in a shared Google spreadsheet and can be filtered by track, so you will be able to see your own group. Only the organisers and the mentors can access the responses. A mentee can answer anonymously. The answers are used to improve the program.

You share it. Organisers do not send it to your mentees for you. Same two moments: about two weeks in, and the last week.

How to actually get the answers

Filling it in later, from a link in a chat, is how most of them get lost.

• In the room. Leave about 10 minutes at the end of that session. Share the link and ask them to fill it in before they leave. This is the version with the highest completion.
• Right after. Put the same link in the group you already use with them. WhatsApp if that group exists. Otherwise the channel they will actually open.

The link arrives from organisers. Do not invent a form of your own.

I have never mentored a group before. Will I be good enough?

Yes, and you are in good company asking. Most editions include facilitation training, which is the fastest way to stop worrying about it. Check the mentoring page and Luma for this edition. Teaming up with a co-mentor is common, up to three per track, and pairing a first-timer with someone experienced happens when it can. Ask in the mentors Slack. First-timers are normal here, not an exception we tolerate.

What if my topic has already been covered?

Then cover it again, differently. The past editions section on the mentoring page lists the recurring topics with the number of editions each has run, and the most durable ones keep filling. A topic does not have to be flashy to be useful. Topics move, and so does the angle. Returning mentors often shift focus or team up with somebody new.

Hardly anyone signed up to my track in the first few days. Should I worry?

No, and organisers have watched this play out across several editions. Some tracks look unwanted early and fill out by the close. Even the ones that stay quiet usually land around eight to ten people, which works. What does help is you sharing the track in your own network, because that is genuinely how most mentees find it.

How do I choose the right mentees?

Look for genuine curiosity, a concrete situation they want to work on, and a realistic chance they will actually show up. Organisers walk you through the selection timing for the edition. You send accept and reject yourselves on decision day, using Telling mentees yes and no.

What if mentees drop out during the program?

Some will. Put your attention on the people who stay engaged. It is almost never about you. Work and life shift in six weeks.

How many people should be in my track?

5 to 15, varying from track to track. Breakouts need around eight before they work properly, so below that plan for full-room discussion. Expect some natural drop-off across the weeks and plan for it rather than against it.

What language do sessions run in, and are they online?

Romanian, fully online. That is fixed for every track, not something a track picks for itself. You coordinate the actual times directly with your group.

Can I record sessions for people who miss one?

No. Sessions are never recorded, and that is what keeps the room honest. People say things in a live session they would never say on a file that outlives it. Share notes or a short async summary instead.

Should I create the WhatsApp group for my track?

No. Organisers create an empty group per track and send you the link. Invite accepted mentees into that group after decisions, if WhatsApp is how you want to run things.

Can I charge for 1:1 sessions after the program?

The program is free and pro bono, and mentoring here is not a lead-generation channel. If someone independently asks you for paid coaching once the edition is over and you both want that, keep it completely separate from the community program. Never pitch it during a session.

Where are the dates for this edition?

The mentoring page, plus the Luma and Slack messages.