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Someone who is respected within the field and has contacts who can help you with publications and jobs. Someone who is knowledgeable about the university and its politics and policies. Someone who takes the time to help with your studies and your career. Someone who does not exploit you. Someone who is not a disinterested observer of your career but cares about you as a person and is supportive -- like a coach cheering you on.

the profile is similar to how junior faculty members would describe their ideal career mentor, too.

The mentor relationship is alive and well in the sciences, where there is a strong tradition of senior researchers bringing postdocs and new assistant professors into their laboratories and grant projects. But in the social sciences and humanities, probably because of the difficult job market, relations between established scholars and newcomers to the profession seem strained.

Take, for example, the concept of apprenticeship, to which the Carnegie researchers devote an entire chapter. The faculty-master and student-apprentice relationship as the signature pedagogical structure of doctoral education dates back to the university's medieval roots. But, the Carnegie authors say, it's time that model was updated.

The study recommends that doctoral programs adopt new structures that allow students to have several intellectual mentors and come to think of mentorship as less an accident of interpersonal chemistry and as more a set of techniques that can be learned, assessed, and rewarded.

Arizona State University that awards an annual $5,000 cash prize to an "outstanding doctoral mentor" or another at the mathematics department of the University of Southern California that places new graduate students in "mentoring triplets" with both a faculty mentor and a more experienced graduate student.

A good place to start searching for a mentor is within your existing network -- that same pool of friends, alumni, and other contacts who helped you during your job search

Since most work environments are very different from academe, you will probably look to a mentor for an explanation of the mores of your new office

Mentors have much to gain from these relationships as well. A senior staff member often learns valuable insights into the organization through the eyes of a talented newcomer like yourself.