The Best Way to Help Your Career Might Be to Help Someone Else

When we think about progressing our careers, we tend to think about ourselves.

• What skills should I learn?
• Who should I network with?
• How do I improve my CV?
• Where should I look for opportunities?
• Who could introduce me to someone?

All perfectly reasonable questions. But perhaps there’s another one we don’t ask often enough.

Who could I help?

Because one of the most effective ways to create opportunities for yourself is to use what you already know to create opportunities for other people.

You Know More Than You Think

One of the strange things about experience is that we quickly stop noticing it. Something that took you ten years to learn can eventually feel obvious. The difficult conversation you’ve had twenty times doesn’t seem particularly difficult anymore. The problem you can diagnose in five minutes might take someone else five days. The skills you’ve accumulated through years of work gradually become simply what you do. But they’re valuable. And somewhere, there’s probably somebody who would benefit from them.

Perhaps they’re earlier in their career. Perhaps they’re trying to solve a problem you’ve encountered before. Perhaps they’re starting a business. Perhaps they’re changing careers. Perhaps they simply need someone experienced to listen and ask a few good questions.

You don’t necessarily need another qualification before you can contribute. You probably already have something worth sharing.

Helping Can Take Many Forms

It doesn’t have to mean becoming a formal mentor. You could spend an hour helping someone think through a problem. Introduce two people who should know each other. Run a workshop. Teach something you understand well. Review someone’s presentation. Help a colleague prepare for an interview. Volunteer your skills to a community organisation. Share something useful you’ve learned. Give someone thoughtful feedback. Offer encouragement when somebody is attempting something difficult.

Sometimes the most useful contribution is simply saying:

“I’ve dealt with something similar. Would it help to talk it through?”

Small acts of generosity can have surprisingly large consequences.

Something Interesting Happens When You Help

People get to see you in action. This is important. A CV can tell someone that you’re an experienced leader. LinkedIn can tell them you’ve spent twenty years working in your profession. You can tell them you’re a great problem solver. But when you actually help somebody solve a problem, they don’t need to take your word for it. They’ve experienced it. They’ve seen how you think. They’ve heard the questions you ask. They know whether you listen. They’ve experienced your judgement. They know what it’s like to work with you. That’s far more powerful than another bullet point on a CV.

Your Network Starts to Change

There’s another consequence. You meet people. Not through awkward networking conversations where everyone is quietly wondering what everyone else can do for them. But through doing something useful together.

One person introduces you to another. Someone remembers the advice you gave them. A person you mentored recommends you. Someone attends a workshop you’ve delivered. A former colleague asks whether you’d mind speaking to someone they know. Your network grows almost accidentally. More importantly, it becomes a network built around contribution and trust rather than connections collected on LinkedIn.

Reputation Is What Other People Say When You’re Not There

This is where helping others becomes particularly powerful. Every time you contribute, you leave behind a little evidence of who you are.

“You should talk to Sarah. She really understands this.”

“David helped me with something similar.”

“I went to a workshop she ran. She was excellent.”

“He introduced me to exactly the right person.”

“Give her a call. She’ll help you think it through.”

That’s reputation. And unlike a CV, reputation travels without you. You don’t control every conversation in which your name appears. But you can influence what people have experienced when they worked with you.

Don’t Turn Generosity Into a Sales Strategy

There’s an important caveat. Helping people works best when helping people is actually the objective. If every coffee comes with an ulterior motive, people notice. If every introduction is followed by a sales pitch, generosity quickly becomes prospecting. And if you’re mentally keeping score of every favour you’ve done, you’ll probably be disappointed.

Some people you help will never be able to help you. That’s fine. Some introductions will go nowhere. Some conversations will simply be pleasant conversations. Somebody may benefit enormously from your advice and you’ll never hear from them again.

Help anyway. Because the value isn’t contained within a single transaction. It’s cumulative.

Opportunity Often Arrives Sideways

We tend to imagine career opportunities arriving through the front door. You see a vacancy. You apply. You interview. You get the job. But many of the most interesting opportunities don’t happen like that. They begin with conversations.

“We’re struggling with something and I thought of you.”

“Would you be interested in helping us with this?”

“Someone told me I should speak to you.”

“Have you ever thought about doing…?”

“We’re putting something together and you’d be perfect for it.”

You couldn’t have searched for those opportunities because, quite often, they didn’t exist until the conversation happened. Someone simply knew what you could do and trusted you enough to make the call.

So Start With What You Have

You don’t need a sophisticated networking strategy.

Start with three simple questions:

What do I know that could be useful to somebody else?

Who might benefit from it?

How could I help?

Then do something. Offer the conversation. Make the introduction. Share the knowledge. Mentor someone. Teach something. Volunteer. Support a colleague. Solve a problem.

You might help someone take their next step. You might make their life a little easier. You might introduce them to someone who changes their career. And somewhere along the way, something else may happen.

More people will know you. More people will understand what you’re good at. More people will have experienced what it’s like to work with you. And more people will think of you when an opportunity appears.

So if you’re wondering what you can do this week to help your career, perhaps start by looking in the opposite direction.

Don’t ask who can help you.

Ask who you can help.