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that might impact your likelihood of getting funded. Conversely, they can identify offers that will just be a time sink and will not be productive for your career pathway. Avoiding unproductive endeavors is a key to success. CHAPTER 3 — WHY DO I NEED A MENTOR, AND HOW DO I FIND ONE? 13 Mentors can help you make correct decisions regarding your own optimal balance between work and non-work life. Some colleagues often bring their significant other to scientific meetings and sneak away for a day or spend the evening with their family. This is perfectly fine, but it will decrease the amount of networking that can occur at that meeting. It should be obvious that your career will advance more if you spend time interacting with colleagues at the meetings. Your marriage might not. Clearly both are important. Deciding to prioritize your family life at the meeting will make your networking less productive. Mentors can help you balance decision making so you can optimize both your work and your nonwork life in the manner of your choosing, but young investigators need to realize that full integration is often not the best approach to satisfy either desire. Market you and develop your reputation A mentor can help market you and your knowledge, skills, and abilities. A wellexperienced mentor should have connections to the editors of journals and enable you to become a reviewer and gain valuable experience critiquing manuscripts. Senior investigators often receive invitations to write chapters, editorials, or invited reviews. If you share an area of scientific expertise, you should have the opportunity to collaborate on these types of projects. Many mentors, particularly clinical and health services researchers, have extensive networks of collaborators. They should be able facilitate your collaborative opportunities and get you involved as a co-investigator on their own and other investigators’ grants. By recommending you for national committee service, your mentor can place you in the room with many leaders of your specialty so that your skills set can be appreciated by them. Provide structure, review, and assist with project development Ultimately, your success will depend on your productivity. Although your mentor should help you establish connections and place you in the right environment to enhance recognition of your skills set, the most important concrete value that is needed from your research mentor is scientific advice that improves the quality of your research. The mentor can also facilitate acquisition of needed resources, whether it be statistical packages, lab space, or biobanking facilities. Your research mentor should be able to assist with study design, obtaining preliminary data, grant preparation, and development of a team of collaborators that predicts a high likelihood of success. Ideally, regular meetings as your project progresses will help challenge you to improve the design and be able to ask the important questions. It is important that the mentor not just pat you on the back, but rather challenge you to design the best possible study that can realistically be accomplished. In the end, a mentor’s success is measured by the success of the mentee. Debriefing Like most things in life, there will be some setbacks. Having someone listen to you and provide counsel when difficulties arise is always useful. This may be the failure of an experiment, rejection of a manuscript, a string of unfunded grants, or change in allocation of clinical and research time within the department. Having someone who has succeeded despite these impediments is comforting and can provide direction and help you develop corrective strategies. Most successful investigators have encountered personal difficulties related to their dedication to work. You may find that your research mentor can help provide guidance or you may prefer to have someone else to speak with when these issues arise. Most successful people have more than one mentor. 14 CHAPTER 3 — WHY DO I NEED A MENTOR, AND HOW DO I FIND ONE? HOW DO I FIND A MENTOR? The answer to this question depends on where you are in your career. In general, however, there are certain principles one should adhere to when choosing a mentor. This individual should be committed to the idea of mentoring you as a person, first of all, and secondly be interested in developing your career. Your mentor should have a successful track record of mentoring others and be someone who can and will provide expertise and contacts to create networking opportunities within and across institutions. They should also be someone with whom there is a potential for reciprocity on your (the mentee’s) side, as this forms the foundation for longer-term relationships. The search for a mentor should begin as soon as possible. For those pursuing research fellowships, mentor selection is less difficult if you select a well-designed established fellowship program. There should be designated individuals in place. Therefore, when searching for a fellowship, your likelihood of success will be greatest if you know what you want and you select a training group with a track record of developing successful investigators. Enrollment in a degree-bearing program will facilitate interaction with multiple faculty with training experience. If you are evaluating first job opportunities, you should consider the 

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