3/3/19 - 4 ways helping a friend with their resume can benefit your resume

by ERICA LAMBERG
It can open your eyes to different keywords you could be using, formatting styles, or make you realize you have a lot of extra content.
https://www.theladders.com/career-advice/4-ways-helping-a-friend-with-their-resume-can-benefit-your-resume 

If your pal or co-worker is looking for some help revising or updating their resume, the benefits could be more than just helping them polish their resume. By getting your creative juices flowing, your proofreading skills sharpened and getting your head back in a job-circuit mentality, you may become inspired to re-craft or update your own resume.

Here, experts share why it’s not only nice to help a friend but why it may help boost your own resume success.

You remember your own accolades
When helping a friend build and improve their resume, you may be inspired to improve your own resume.

“It always inspires me to improve my own resume because it makes me think of experiences I had not highlighted in the past, and it helps me remember programming or events I had not considered putting in my resume but are absolutely beneficial,” says Jen Fry, a resume expert.

You can reframe your own experiences
If you’ve worked in a particular sector for a long time, your resume may have tunnel vision.

“By reviewing a friend’s resume, particularly a friend who works in a different field, you can see how other people prioritize and talk about their skills,” says career coach Meg Duffy.

Your resume can get a structure re-boot
Helping friends in their job search is always a great way to develop your job-seeking skills since you can get their perspective and see how they go about it, while also engaging in discussions when you provide them with advice, says Valerie Streif, with Pramp, a mock interview platform for job seeking developers, software engineers, data scientists, and product managers . When you see how someone else formats and structures their resume, you can get an idea of how to improve your own.

“It can open your eyes to different keywords you could be using, formatting styles, or make you realize you have a lot of extra content on your resume that doesn’t need to be there,” says Streif.

Your benefits can go beyond a resume
Through brainstorming resumes with a friend, it can spawn peer-to-peer interview practice which is also an excellent way to boost skills, says Streif.

“Because working with another person is going to give you a chance to see their strengths and weaknesses, and their feedback on your performance gives you an idea what you need to work on before your real interview interaction,” Streif continues. “Sometimes, we don’t realize the little body language signals we give off to the interviewer, so having a chance to ‘check this’ is valuable.”