After many years of medical school, the residency match process, general surgery residency training, research fellowships, and additional fellowship match processes and training programs, you are ready and excited to take care of surgical patients both in and out of the operating room. You are ambitious and idealistic, ready to emerge from all of those grueling years to finally be a “surgeon.” The training of a surgeon, however, rarely focuses on life after residency. And this life after residency starts with your first job. Furthermore, there is startling data regarding dissatisfaction physicians in general often have with their first jobs. In fact, approximately 50% of physicians change jobs within their first 2 years, and the most common reason for this is a mismatch in expectations and practice culture . The goal of this section is to prepare the surgical trainee in his or her final years of training for the daunting task of navi gating the surgical job market in order to maximize the odds of finding a job that fits one’s expectations. Later chapters in this manual will cover both the process of choosing a job as well as salary and contract negotiations. In this chapter, however, the focus will be on the first step of the job hunt, finding a job.