The Many Benefits of Helping Others to Help Yourself

There is a reason why doctors shouldn’t diagnose and treat their own illnesses, why career advisers should seek help from other advisers about their own career paths, and why looking at your résumé for the 100th time isn’t very useful. It is not always possible to be objective about ourselves -- to separate what we feel from what we know -- and we often tend to treat ourselves more harshly than we do others.

To overcome that challenge when it comes to your career exploration and job search process, one mutually beneficial approach is to invest wholeheartedly in helping someone else achieve their career goals. Not only does this make us good human beings, but it gives us a window into how we can help ourselves.

Most of us are quite self-centered. Who doesn’t remember the feeling of giving a talk and knowing for sure that everyone was intently watching you shake, sweat and stumble nervously throughout it -- only to find out that people were actually more interested in your content than your nervousness? For some reason, I always felt that my kneecaps shook whenever I presented in front of people during my undergraduate years. I had a vision in my mind of what a mess I must have looked like. Unsurprisingly, no one ever talked about my kneecaps afterwards. I don’t think that visibly shaking kneecaps are actually a real phenomenon, even if it felt like they were. We only experience the world around us through our own unique perspectives, and what we feel (both physically and mentally) takes up a lot of our attention.

The art of helping other people, often in a mentoring way, is an essential tool in your professional development. It gives you the opportunity to practice using the words and sharing the advice that you need to hear yourself saying out loud -- so that eventually you can say them to yourself!

For example, if a first- or second-year Ph.D. student comes to you and asks for advice about navigating their graduate school experience, a couple of things will probably happen. First, you will experience a wave of emotions that come from reliving your own experiences, good and bad, as a Ph.D. student. In most cases, you won’t want to share all of those with the student, so you will have to pick and choose which experiences that you can actually turn into helpful counsel. Since the student has reached out to you as someone who they hope has some answers and advice, you will also feel a little pressure to formulate a response that is more than just a stream of consciousness. After all, you don’t want someone else to think that you haven’t learned anything from your own experiences, and you definitely want people to think that you have good advice to give.

Having sifted through your emotions and tried to think of the best lessons from your experiences, you then have to communicate those to the student. Whether in person, over video, on the phone or by email, you have to verbalize your thoughts. Since your lived experience is valuable to people who haven’t yet had this experience, after talking to you, the student will walk away with more information, new perspectives and probably some good insights that they can use.

Hearing yourself give advice is fantastic. It allows you to realize that you have learned a lot from your experiences, and that there are actually actions you can also take to help yourself based on what you have learned. This is a positive place to be as you think about the next steps in your career development!

Without a student asking you for counsel, this process might feel very different. In most cases, as you think back on your own experiences, you may get caught up in the emotions connected with them and not be able to turn them into actionable steps. Why? Because you are not trying to prove to yourself that you have learned something -- your reputation is not on the line, because you already know yourself. It is hard to generate the same clarity of thought because your conversation with yourself is all happening inside your head. It is not as easy to fact-check your inner voice as it is your outer one.

A similar challenge presents itself with résumés as well. Having looked at your own résumé (or any of your application materials) for the 100th time, you will get a bad case of résumé blindness. Your brain will switch off because it already knows what you are trying to say, and so there is no point in it paying attention to what you have actually written. In fact, your brain is way ahead of you and simply fills in any blanks with lots of great imagery in your mind.

I have been involved in several workshops where students have been asked to swap their résumés with others and provide feedback. Unsurprisingly, people are much more able to identify statements in other people’s résumés that don’t make as much sense as they should. They are quick to point out formatting issues (the type they have in their own résumés), and they offer practical suggestions for ways to improve them all because they are seeing the résumé with fresh eyes. A real bonus to this exercise is that people are often impressed by what they read in other people’s résumés. They find the experiences interesting. They like the range of skills they are reading about. In short, they see all the good aspects as well as areas that need more work.

Three Takeaways

Here's a question: When you look at your own résumé, do you feel impressed and energized by everything that you have accomplished? Probably not. For you, the résumé is just a task that you are trying to get done. For other people, however, it is a two-dimensional version of you, a window into your lived experiences. By taking the time to help others with their résumés, you will also gain a fresh appreciation of all your skills and accomplishments. You will also find it easier to spot those tiny formatting issues, too.

So what is the takeaway here? Consider three next steps.

First, if you are feeling stuck in your own career exploration, networking or job search, look around and find other people who may be similarly stuck. By supporting and helping them succeed, you will gain a newfound ability to offer yourself the kind of advice you will offer them. And you may find that they can offer you advice, as well.

Second, if someone reaches out to you looking for advice on their academic or professional career, and if you are in a position where you have the time and energy to help, take this opportunity. The advice you offer will help them be more informed about their career to allow them to make better decisions along the way. The advice you give is also advice you can take!

And finally, consider finding yourself some job search buddies among your peers. Ask them to share their insights about your skills and experiences and the elements they like about your application materials -- and realize that these are all aspects of you that you should highlight more. Listening to the positive things they say about you will help you appreciate your strengths. You will value what makes you different from the other people you are helping, and you will be able to look at your career narratives more objectively. If you can talk optimistically and energetically about your skills and experiences in your application materials and your job interviews, you will maximize your potential to leave a positive impression on a future employer. You will help your peers in this way, too.

It is always OK to ask for help. It will always be beneficial to you when you can help others, too.