Steps required for good mentoring
In a Commentary in the latest (January) issue of Nature Immunology (9, 3-5; 2008), Mentoring and networking: how to make it work, Laura Haynes and coauthors describe the importance and steps required for good mentoring and networking.
Mentoring is considered so important for the development of scientists that the National Science Foundation now requires its grantees to provide information on how they will mentor postdoctoral fellows. The Nature Immunology authors address why this function is crucial, how good mentors can be found, and outline the process and benefits -- "a mentor should equip the mentee with the necessary advice and tools to establish themselves as a researcher, while the mentee must be prepared to translate advice into action."
It is perhaps not so intuitively obvious why networking is important. Clearly, it is a useful skill in finding a new job, but as Haynes et al. point out, it is essential to continuing success in all aspects of a career, as it consists of making meaningful, long-lasting contacts to enhance a researcher's visibility in a field where other people are reviewing one's grants and publications, choosing speakers to invite to conferences and seminars, and providing job and award references. The authors write: "new and innovative ways to network have become available to the more technologically savvy researcher. One example is Nature Network, which is an online meeting place for local scientists to gather, talk and find out about the latest scientific news and events in their area. Among other features, the website allows researchers to create personal profiles and set up groups for labs, departments or institutions, and it allows each member to build a network of like-minded scientists."
Update: Corie Lok, Editor of Nature Network, writes here about why networking is good for your career, describing a talk she gave at the New York Academy of Sciences.