We’ve all rolled our eyes when someone spouts the old cliché of ‘finding yourself’ during travel. I cringe when I hear that phrase because I know, before I travelled, it stirred up middle-class-gap-year-student stereotypes or labels like ‘hippy’.
Perhaps it is traveller stereotypes like these that make people worry what employers will think of them when they return from a long trip. The natural assumption – a myth I am about to debunk – is that having a gap on your CV or resume for travel is not a positive thing. How can you be career-driven and ambitious if you’ve just taken a year out to ‘find yourself’? Or, what happened to make you want to leave for a year? When I was looking for jobs after a travel career break, some recruitment consultants even told me not to talk about it, or suggested ways I could “explain my year away”.
We don’t often talk about the practical ways that travel makes us more rounded and skilled individuals. It’s time we started talking about why travelling is great for personal development and makes us better employees. Employers, listen up, because I’m talking to you too.
I didn’t realise the truth myself until I was back in an office and started to notice little changes to my approach. I’d been taken in by the myth too. If you look at it from the evidence available to employers, it’s easy to see why the typecast can be perpetuated.
Social media is a great platform for travellers to share their experiences. However, people use it to paint a picture of their best life. From an employer’s point of view, if they’re trying to work out what you’ve been doing during your travel career break and all they can see is drinks on the beach and you hanging out at cool places, they might just think it’s a glorified holiday. What’s so impressive about that? Why do you stand out over other people who are currently in jobs and have been hard at work?
What you don’t see on social media is the struggle and hard work that goes into travelling. The constant challenges and adaptation. We tell everyone about the good times on our trip, but we don’t post on Facebook about the days we just want to stay in because it’s all getting a bit much. We never speak about how uncomfortable and challenging it is when we come across aggressive or rude people.
Travelling is drastically different from everyday, nine-to-five life. In this article I explore how that affects you as a person. Below I’ve listed seven ways I believe travelling will make you a better employee.
If you’re returning from a travel career break and looking for work, don’t be afraid to talk about your experience and how it has improved you. For each factor, I have detailed why it is important and how travel has a positive effect. You can use this to make a clear link between your experiences and your employee attributes on your CV or resume. And it will equip you to answer that “what about your career gap?” question in job interviews.
This article is also aimed at employers. I want you to think about what a career break actually means, and what that person is likely to bring to your organisation.
1. You’ll be more creative
Why is this important?
Being creative is a skill that employers like to see on a CV or resume because it means that the person can think for themselves. It’s a different way of saying that you can use your own initiative. I work in the field of marketing and communications, so I’m always helping people come up with new ideas – but whatever your profession, it’s almost certain that creativity is required at some level.
How does travelling make you more creative?
When you see the same things over and over again every day, it’s easy to get lost in that world and forget that there are other ways of doing things. Travelling fires up your senses because you’re constantly seeing new colours and patterns. You’re hearing new sounds, tasting new food and smelling new smells.
When you travel to new places it’s like being a child. You see everything for the first time and you’re constantly learning. It reignites your imagination, and – as a result – you become more creative in your approach to things like communication or problem-solving.
2. You’ll be more calm
Why is this important?
Being calm will mean you are less stressed, which means you’ll generally be friendlier and healthier. If a colleague is calm in the workplace, it makes them more approachable and more likely to be included in teamwork or collaborative projects.
How can travel make you more calm?
When I’m at home I get into routines for which side of the street I walk on. I have the same things for lunch, watch the same kind of TV programmes, listen to the same music. But when you’re moving to a new place every three days your routines are disrupted.
This was difficult for me to deal with at first. However, I learned how to accept it and be alright with it, which has made me calmer when I’m faced with change or challenge.
3. You’ll be better at networking
Why is this important?
Everything in the world is becoming more collaborative and more competitive. The skill of networking allows you to build useful, mutually beneficial relationships with people who can help you achieve your goals, both personally and professionally.
How does travelling improve your networking skills?
During my one-year travel career break I met hundreds of new people. I’ve even shared bedrooms with them! (Don’t worry, dorms are legit.)
Before I went travelling I knew I needed to get better at networking – it was even one of my personal development goals at work – but I just didn’t want to do it. I didn’t enjoy it. When you travel there isn’t time to think or procrastinate. You just have to network. Being around new people and making fresh contacts is so much more natural to me now.
4. You’ll be more confident
Why is this important?
Being confident is so important at work. I’m not talking about being cocky or arrogant, but rather about having confidence in your ability to do your job, or to challenge people when you don’t think something is right.
This kind of confidence makes you a better teammate and a better leader. It also makes you more trustworthy, because people will understand that you will provide constructive criticism when it’s needed.
How does travelling improve your confidence?
Sharing a room with strangers meant that I needed to be comfortable with asking to switch the light off or keep the noise down, because I had paid to use that space as well. Small steps like this really improved my confidence as I was able to speak up when I thought behaviour was not acceptable.
Taking a career break to travel is a scary decision to make, and going through it has made me more confident in my decisions. I also think that living out of a backpack for a year has made me more confident in my appearance. These are subtle changes over time, but they will begin to shine through in your personality the more you travel, and will be evident to employers in an interview.
5. You’ll be more comfortable with criticism
Why is this important?
Resilience is a quality that many employers look for according to a number of blogs I’ve read on the subject. For me, this means that a person is able to learn and improve without taking everything personally. They are able to accept and provide quality, constructive feedback.
This shows willingness to learn and improve, but it is also a brilliant quality when working with different types of people in different situations.
How can travel make you more comfortable with criticism?
This quality goes hand-in-hand with being more confident. I spent a lot of time hearing different views while travelling, and I have learned to respect other people’s opinions more. I realised that not all criticism is personal, and actually a lot of it is based on the other person’s perceptions.
It’s my responsibility to change those perceptions by helping people understand what I’m choosing to do and why. I also want to be challenged in order to learn and grow, so I will start to put myself out there more and embrace the criticism (as long as it’s constructive!).
6. You’ll understand your motivations and frustrations
Why is this important?
Self-awareness is crucial if you plan to enjoy your work and be a recommended employee. Understanding your values behind your motivations and frustrations allows you to avoid the frustrations at work, and do more of the stuff that motivates you. It ultimately makes you a better decision-maker.
How does travelling help you understand your motivations and frustrations?
When you travel you are taken out of your comfort zone every day. I began to understand patterns in what I was getting excited about and what frustrated me, and because I wasn’t working constantly I had time to reflect on this and take actions that provided me with more motivation.
It helped that I travelled with my partner, as we had a lot of honest conversations when we were having good or bad days about why they were happening. We wanted to understand each other better, but also make sure that we were both getting the experience we wanted from our travel career break.
7. You’ll be clearer about what you want from your career
Why is this important?
Before I went travelling, I had a sense of entitlement at work. I always thought I should be in the room, be given more responsibilities, be given more opportunities or pay rises or promotions. Since I let go of this, I instantly became happier at work.
Knowing that you are where you want to be, and in a role you want to do, will help you plan at work because you’ll stop getting involved in things you shouldn’t and you’ll stop getting stressed about things that are above your pay grade. On the flip side, if you know that you aren’t where you want to be, you can start to change that.
How did travel help me know what I want from my career?
We spent a year on the road, so I had lots of time to think and reflect on what I’d done in my life. Taking time out of the office to meet new people and experience new cultures showed me a different way of living.
This helped me understand that, although I am career-driven and I do have ambitions, I don’t need to have everything all at once. In fact, it’s probably better that I don’t! And it’s nobody’s job to hand me the promotions or pay rises on a plate, it’s something I have to plan and work for.
Understanding your personal development from travel
There will be hundreds of different skills that you will learn from travelling. It’s useful to contextualise your learning, especially if you’re looking to go back into work afterwards. I would recommend asking yourself some questions while you are travelling about what you are learning, why that’s important and how it can be applied in a professional or personal setting.
Do you have any skills you learned from travelling? Or any development areas that you overcame? Share your stories in the comments below to help others understand the practical benefits of taking a career break to travel.
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