Regarding the mentoring and guiding of fresh college graduates during their first professional job as a software engineer in industry:
What all areas we need to keep in mind while mentoring and guiding newly hired software engineer who has no industry experience in past ?
The best way is shadowing. I was fortunate to have an experienced engineer as a mentor in my first job where right off the bat I was doing real-time assembly, I am forever indebted to him. There is nothing like having a live example of good work to put a newly graduated in the right path.
There are a lot of factors which you need to look for. My organization uses a personal development cycle and coaching to train new candidates. Here is what we do
There are many levels to assess competency, but it usually comes down to skill and confidence.
To teach skill, the candidate being mentored has to be given an equal dose of knowledge and experience. This means, give them small assignments which allow them time to learn and produce their own answers. Then provide feedback by reviewing their assignments.
To infuse confidence, gradually increase the difficulty of the assignments, and eventually put them to work in teams which can give them a small piece of the software to work on. They will feel confident if they can get positive feedback from their own work.
Start with spoon feeding first, then gradually remove the spoon feeding to build confidence.
Each new task the candidate starts, reassess the skill and confidence of the candidate. Be prepared to pull candidates away from projects which are too much for them to handle. Each person learns at his own pace.
Generally , weak candidates are weak not because they are stupid, but rather its because they don't have the opportunity to shine.
There are a few high-level topics new hires need mentoring on.
1) Technical mentoring. Have them sit in on code reviews, explain things to them, when you help them let them stumble and show them why their answer isn't optimal instead of just giving them the right answer, helping them understand why you trade off one thing for another, etc. This is mainly common sense, and requires a lot of patience and understanding.
2) Navigating professional life. Work isn't the same as school - there are several nuances to success besides just technical knowledge. Managing time, managing your peers, managing your superiors... these need experience. Make sure they're exposed to work life beyond just the technical.
3) Interpersonal skills. It's rare (impossible?) to succeed individually. Working in a team professionally is very different from working in a team in school. Give them exposure to team interaction, dealing with difficult personalities, making decisions that are 'liked' by all, etc. Again, this is something they're just going to have to experience. Your job is to give them an opportunity to experience it.
4) Understanding the business. Hopefully, this is another aspect of professional life you can help them get exposure to. Understanding what's good for the business might not always be what's 'right', understanding tradeoffs, etc.
I'd also suggest having a timeline for some of these things:
1) The first week - This is outside of any on-boarding that is done when someone starts a job. This is where the manager and others may have to spend the most time with someone new to make sure the new person knows what to do, has the tools to do the job and is left to do the job to some extent. A key point here is showing what the common toolset is such as the source control system, integrated development environment, and other things beyond just a PC or Mac to do the work. This may be the worst time for whoever gets to break in the new guy. The new person may already know some of these things but whatever practices and standards are used is part of what has to get communicated here.
2) The first month - This is where you want to see if the person is finally getting settled and is contributing. Not necessarily tons of stuff, but enough that the hand holding has dropped considerably and there is some faith that the new person can handle tasks. This is likely where I'd suggest having an initial one-on-one to see how the new person thinks they are doing and how well are they meeting expectations.
3) The first quarter(3 months) - This is a typical probation period ending and is useful to see what else has happened in that past couple of months. How are the communication skills? How is the quality and quantity of work done? Are the next steps fairly obvious and going to be done now.
A key point is to give the new person support and not to coddle them as while they may be new to the job, their skill levels will probably be all over the map. This is the time to discover if the new person meshes will with everyone else or if the person is too disruptive to be a good part of the team. As someone that got rather burned more than a few times in my first job that I had for less than 2 months, I do believe in some trial by fire as some of what various places use isn't likely to be taught in school and in some ways shouldn't be.