Feature photo by John Wardell (Netinho). Photo above by h.dot.
Turn your travel adventures into an edge over competitors in your search for a job.
You’ve just gotten back from a year away and now you need to get a job. You’re nervous and have to figure out how getting drunk at hostels, lying on beaches, and photographing churches can be classified as “experience.”
First, breathe. It’s not that bad. You’re lucky, not only because you got to travel, but because current events have turned in your favor.
Businesses need experienced people who know other cultures, have a desire to learn, are motivated, speak another language, and are willing to move around, all of which are qualities you possess.
It was only five years go that taking a year off was considered career suicide, but now, it’s often considered a career boost- a sign of independence, motivation, and ambition. Employers won’t throw away your resume anymore because of a gap year.
But how do you turn that year into tangible experience to showcase in a resume?
1. Don’t put everything on your résumé
90% of your travels aren’t really “experience,” but soft skills you picked up on the road: people skills, confidence, and independence. Though you may be tempted to write that stuff on your resume, don’t. You’ll sound cheesy and as though you are just putting in useless filler.
2. It’s not the resume, it’s the cover letter!
Your travels are a story and the details don’t translate well as bullet points on a resume. Talk about them in the cover letter, where you can give more detail.
Explain why you left, what your experience taught you, and how it makes you a better employee. This is also where you want to mention those “soft skills,” as they require more detail than a simple bullet point expression. Discuss your travels in depth here using only a small section of the resume as support.
Photo by SOCIALisBETTER.
Tip: Regale interviewers with funny (but not over the top) stories. It will make you stand apart from everyone else. Those willing to take a chance are the type of leaders businesses look for. They want people who lead them into new directions, not waste away behind a desk.
3. Step by step instructions for articulating your experience.
Step One: Call it what it is. Many people put their trip under work experience, but since it’s not work, it’s not work experience. At the bottom of your resume, create a section called “Other Experience” and title it “(Your Name) Gap Year” and include the dates.
Step Two: Pick tangible skills. Skills that translate into any job. Like everything on a resume, this will be all about how you word things. Choose your wording carefully. For example:
Haggled over a dollar with a tuk tuk driver or tried to save a few thousand Dong off a shirt in Vietnam? Negotiation Skills.
Got stuck in an airport because you forgot your plane? Adaptability.
Had to plan, finance, and organize your trip? Budgeting and Planning.
Got stuck in a jungle at night because you explored off the trail? Self-reliance and independence.
You get the idea. It’s all about wording your experience correctly. Notice how those are all skills you can use in the business world. I didn’t put any of those “soft skills” down.
Writing “I’m good with people” is generic and makes you sound full of crap. Choose only job related “hard” skills for the resume because what you are doing is showing how your life experience makes up for your lack of practical experience.
Photo by psoup216.
Step Three: Know your audience! Only put travel on your resume if it helps explain an extended work gap (i.e. a year or longer), is relevant to the job, or unique. If all you did was live in Thailand on Phuket and got drunk then it is useless filler that will only hurt you. If you volunteered in an orphanage in Cambodia, then keep it on. If this job requires extended travel, definitely put it here.
So what would this all look like? Here’s how I would put it on my resume.
Other Experience
Matt’s Gap Year 2007-2008
- Developed negotiation skills through daily contact with sellers in markets and vendors throughout Asia.
- Learned how to adapt to unanticipated situations and improvise new plans due to periodic travel mishaps and unexpected events.
- Developed budgeting and planning skills by financing, planning, organizing my year around the world. This involved using various spreadsheets and keeping a record of expenses.
- Cultivated language and communication skills through contact with people from around the world. Learned to use non verbal and verbal communication to overcome communication and language barriers.
That sounds professional, actionable, and tangible. It explains each skill and how I developed it. Remember that the employer is going to ask you to explain these points just like they would any other part of your resume.
It’s important you have anecdotes supporting each bullet point, especially since these have no boss to confirm any of this- just your word. If you can’t explain it well, keep it off.
Use your travel experience to differentiate yourself. That’s why in the beginning, I said put it in the cover letter. It allows you more time to explain the story behind it.
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9 Comments... join the discussion!
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To be honest, if travel teaches you anything, it’s that there are more exciting things to do than work. Work has its own soul-crushing culture. Leave travel off the resume unless you are applying for a job serving tables or working in travel or with other cultures.
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Very timely and well-written article. As the world gets flatter and flatter, it will be more and more necessary to speak a few languages, be familiar with at least a few cultures, and be able to think outside the box (which can only be helped by leaving the quit tangible box of your home country).
Not to mention the fact that more an more professions are going virtual, which will allow you to take the travel skills you learned and apply them every day, since you’ll be logging into work (and therefore can work from anywhere) instead of commuting in the not-to-distant future (if you aren’t already).
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i believe travel makes for a better person all round, but this article’s crap. you write that in a CV for a competitive job, you’ll come off as trivial at best and a hippie at worst.
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very helpful and extremely relevant — thank you Matt
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Great article, Matt. Wording your experiences this carefully is so much better than leaving them off altogether- avoiding an explanation screams “unemployment.” Thanks for the tips!
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I wouldn’t say the “current events” have turned in favor of those who are unemployed, but I guess this article was written a year ago, so things were different then.
And for #3. I actually do list my year of travel under “Work Experience” because I call it a “One Year Career Break” and link to my travel blog, but then again, I work in marketing, so it might be a little different than if I worked in healthcare etc.
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This article raises some good practical strategies for learning to sell yourself and your experiences no matter what they are.
The only thing is, I find I have to include all travel details on my CV even if it was only 2 months of galavanting around Mediterranean Europe. This is because otherwise employers don’t know what you did during that time. It looks bad to have gaps on your CV, you must always have dates that match up with no gaps. It keeps your integrity in tact and leaves nothing to be guessed or assumed (such as unemployment).
I worked in Recruitment for 3 years while on a working holiday visa in the UK and I always saw gaps in candidate CVs in a bad light. It just made extra work for me to have to fill in the blanks and I didn’t want to have to ring them up and screen them just to find out information they should have given me up-front in the first place!
Cheers
Amy↵ -
Matt is right about knowing your audience. I’ve been trying to find work in New York after an eight month trip and not many people are taking my travel experience seriously.
Also, in this economy, it’s tough to justify travel experience when you have to compete with people that have just been laid off, or worse when you get an employer who thinks someone who got laid off deserves a job more than someone who quit to travel.
That being said, I still put my travel experience on my resume because as Amy B noted it does let people know what I have been doing.
As a compliment to this article I would suggest that potential travelers increase their network before they travel with people who are sympathetic to their goals. That’s a great way to get ahead of other people who were constantly working while you were away traveling.↵
