About 15 months ago my current boss visited South Africa to sample the Neoproterozoic and early Cambrian rocks near the Namibian border, and I ended spending a week or so out in the field helping with the drilling – at very short notice too, when someone else took ill. The pay-off for my altruism was that when she found herself in need of a new post-doc, she got in touch to see if I would be interested in joining the project. As it turned out, I was. And today, I found myself in the rock cutting room, cutting up the samples that I helped to drill all those months ago – rocks that have been on the project longer than I have. Indeed, it could be argued that they helped to get me my job.
The key lesson from this: never pass up an opportunity to cultivate allies in your field of research.