Top Benefits of a Career Break

I’m happy to report that the term ‘Career Break’ seems to be popping up all over these days! I hope that has a little to do with our upcoming Meet, Plan, Go! event. Regardless of why – we are happy to see people talking, writing, and reporting about them. However, this month’s career break news seems to be a mixed bag of positive and negative! What is a career breaker to believe?!

Let’s start with the disturbing headlines. I woke up and saw this headline in my inbox one day:

Women told to forget about babies if they want to scale career heights
Headhunters’ survey suggests that taking even a few months’ career break for the sake of children will harm prospects of winning a top executive job.
- That’s the message from a new survey, conducted by InterExec, which showed that 53% of those questioned said that women who want a big business post should give up all thoughts of maternity leave – or what they prefer to call a “career break”.

Sure – I know they are talking about a maternity leave career break as opposed to a sabbatical/travel career break – but they are both breaks in your career. If motherhood isn’t an acceptable reason to take a break in your career then it’s going to be darn hard to sell breaking from your career to travel the world. Therefore I put this in the category of disturbing.

However as you consider taking a career break – consider the other point of view – the progressive point of view. Think about how a career break can actually build your skills to find an even better career upon returning. Regardless of why you put your career on pause, the benefits are still the same – you get some time to step away from the rat race and replenish.

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How to Make Your Travels Part of Your Career Brand

For many career breakers, it would be a dream to continue to travel. But most do return to work, whether it’s a new career or back to the briefcase. Mario Schulzke, Creator of CareerSparx, shares with us “How to Make Your Travels Part of Your Career Brand”.

Your career brand is much more than the sum of your past work experience.  It is the aggregate of both who you are as an individual and why someone would want to work with you.  It is about taking various life experiences and showing how they have—or will—contribute to your career.

If you are contemplating taking some time off to travel or if you are returning to work from extended travel, be confident that it likely did not or will not hinder your long-term career goals.

Wherever travel comes into your life, it is there for a purpose; it satisfies a need and brings clarity to our often-convoluted worlds.  You experience new things, learn about new cultures and often return with a wisdom that informs how you see the world.

When it comes time to return to the workplace, you can communicate the value of your travel experience as part of your career brand.  Here’s how:

Understand how your travels contribute to who you are.
This may take some careful retrospection unless you keep a blog or journal—which is a great idea that I go into more detail about below—but it is important to understand what you learned and experienced while traveling.  Reflect on your time abroad and the qualities you developed as a result of your experiences.  Take the time to write this down and contribute to the list as more things come to mind.

Here are some questions for thought:

• What spurred my travel ambitions in the first place?
• What was the most memorable experience and why?
• What were my most important revelations?
• Did I think back on my life before travel in any particular way?  Was there anything negative I hoped to change?

Translate these experiences and qualities to work-related skills.
Now that you understand the positive ways in which travel affected your life, you need to communicate how this will help you professionally.  Again, write this down, using concrete examples from your travel to tell a story and make a point.  You can weave this information into your resume or use it during interviews.  Here are some questions to get started:

• Have my life-long goals changed? Have my career goals changed? How?
• What qualities have I strengthened that would make me an effective team player?
• What have I learned from my interactions with strangers around the world that will help me be a better leader?

Demonstrate a better understanding of who you are and what you want.
After traveling, you will be returning with a much better idea of the type of job and workplace that is right for you.  This brings confidence to future employers because if you truly know what you want, what you can provide and how you fit into their company, you will be a reliable and motivated part of their team.  Communicate this.

Document your travels and experiences.
Listen, the Web is here to stay and it’s going to affect your professional career in some sort of way.  An interesting blog, for example, is something that you can do to set you apart from other job applicants.  Usually the hardest challenge about creating a blog is having something worthy to write about.  Well, guess what?  Unless your travels consisted of being holed up in a hotel room in Cincinnati, I bet you have some interesting stories to tell.  So, tell them.

Check out WordPress.com, Tumblr.com or Posterous.com for easy ways to set up your own blog.

Wherever your career brand manifests itself—through a blog, resume, cover letter or your persona—know that your travel experience can be as valuable to a potential employer as it is to you.

ABOUT MARIO
Mario Schulzke was born and raised in Germany, and lived in France, Spain and England before coming to the U.S. as a high school exchange student.  He has traveled across China and has backpacked many of America’s national parks.  He is the creator of CareerSparx.com, an online course that teaches recent graduates how to start their careers.  For more information, download their free 61-page guide on how to start your career or check out the CareerSparx blog.

Breaking Into a New Field or Industry

Whether you are returning from a career break and trying to figure out your next steps or are contemplating a sabbatical but don’t know where to start, our career coaches are here to help.

Barbara Pagano of YourSABBATICAL answers the question:

I’ve realized I no longer want to go back to my old career. In a market with high unemployment, how can I make myself noticed or create opportunities in a new field or industry?

Congratulations on being a risk-taker! Staying in a career that no longer fits your needs can be one of the most debilitating moves away from future happiness. Plus it robs your potential. Here are three ideas to break into a new field or industry during a sabbatical, even in these trying times:

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Next Steps: Easing into Re-Entry

Lisa Lubin of LL World Tour shared with us her experiences dealing with Reverse Culture Shock after her around the world travels. Here are some tips she found helpful to ease back into the re-entry process.

THINGS TO AVOID:

• Getting sucked in to watching too much TV. For about 3 years I barely watched TV. I did not miss it at all. It can be enjoyable at times, but there are so many better things we can be doing.
• Feeling the ‘need’ to follow too much media about senseless issues (ie Jon & Kate? Who are these people and why do I care?). Being aware of world events and news is good; surmising if Jennifer and Brad will ever get back together is ridiculous.
• Eating too much – We eat so much more in this country than we need to AND so much of that is barely real food. Strive to continue to eat as fresh and local as when you were traveling.
• I went for years without a cell phone. I still sometimes forget mine at home now and ONLY have a prepaid phone – no bill, no contracts, just pay-as-you-go and I like it. I don’t NEED to chat endlessly on the phone just because everyone around me is. I don’t want or need to be reachable 24/7.

THINGS TO DO:

• Stay in touch with new friends from travels. With email and Facebook this is so easy and fun.
• Keep the ‘learning’ going…if you loved salsa dancing in Latin America – find a salsa class at home. Miss the tasty spring rolls in Vietnam? Seek out a cooking class. Have an international dinner party. Organize a monthly outing to a different ethnic restaurant. If you miss the challenge of chatting with locals in another language…take a language class. Go to museums, check local magazines and newspapers for other cultural meeting and groups.
• Meet new friends back home. In larger cities there are expat groups or other travel groups (meetup.com and Couchsurfing.com) with which you can get together for a drink or coffee with like-minded people.
• Couchsurfing – Sign up to be a host. You can meet and show others from abroad around your town. Return the favor for the hospitality you received while traveling.
• Volunteer with travelers/tourists: Contact your local tourism department to see what’s going on. Free services like Chicago Greeter and Big Apple Greeter are always looking for volunteers to give visitors a taste of your city from a local’s perspective.
• Volunteer at your local Youth Hostel.
• Let yourself feel sad or different. It’s okay. Time will ease the sadness, but you don’t want to forget.
• Reminisce – look at your photos, think about your trip, organize your blog and your photos.
• Share – You’ve learned so much while traveling. Hold on to this. Share it with others. Maybe your experiences will teach and/or inspire others to get out and see the world…or, maybe not to travel, but just to be more aware of the world around them.
• FINAL POINT: start planning you next trip!

Next Steps: Turning a Passion into a Business

We have shared many inspiring stories of Americans who have taken a career break to travel. But then we were contacted by Jorrit and Nicky Jorritsma, a couple who reside in the Lake District of Great Britain with their 11-year-old daughter Kiah. They are self-proclaimed “Briefcase to Backpackers” and wanted to share their story of how they turned their passion for traveling into a business. We found their story to be incredibly inspiring and felt you would as well.

Hi, we’re Jorrit and Nicky. Today we produce and sell classic, sustainable travel bags and outdoor gear but it was a long journey to get here. Here’s our story of how we went from backpack to briefcase, then back to travelling, and finally re-designed our lives to bring our work and our love of adventure together.

We hope that our story will inspire you to take some time out to travel – and to draw on your travels to reinvigorate your life on returning to the workplace. Having married and later set up our own business as a result of travelling, we passionately believe in mixing the worlds of work and adventure!

OUR FIRST TRAVEL ADVENTURE

Jorrit - In Europe, many teenagers go travelling in a Gap Year between school and university. However, despite the fact that we’re both European, that actually wasn’t our story. After our school studies, neither of us took the option of a traditional Gap Year. Instead, we headed to university and, on completing our degrees, immediately entered the world via work and military service. Nicky joined the management programme of United Distillers, part of the Guinness Group, while I did military service in Holland (my homeland) as an officer in the Strategy Department. And it was for very different reasons that we each ended up travelling after that.

Nicky – For me, I came to a point where I felt that I needed to review my career plans. I’d been working for United Distillers for a couple of years. But, within a short space of time, my Grandfather died, my Dad fell ill, a four-year relationship ended, and I found myself in two car crashes. Chatting with a girlfriend at work, I decided to plan to head to South America for a year and see where to go from there. My key motivations were:

• Realising that life can be short and alter quickly – it’s important to grab chances while we can.
• To feel the freedom of making my own choices day by day.
• To experience the excitement of exploring unknown countries.
• To test my ability to deal with whatever happened while travelling and hopefully grow in confidence.

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Next Steps: Career Choices & Resources

Even before you’ve returned from your career break travels, you probably put some thought into what you want (or don’t want) from your next job.

If you are anything like us (Michael, Michaela, and Sherry), you probably fall into one of these categories:

• You want to return to the Briefcase, but on a different career track
• You want to utilize your skills and talents to pursue freelance work
• You want to pick up the Backpack again, never to return to corporate

BACK TO THE BRIEFCASE
You had an incredible around-the-world experience but are ready to re-enter the corporate world. Michael always knew he’d return to corporate, and used his career break to refocus on what his career goals were. These were some of the resources he utilized to get a job upon his return:

Job Boards:

• Monster
• Yahoo Careers
• The Ladders – Operations Manager and Executive Positions

Executive Search Firms:

• Cook Associates
• Spencer Stuart

Networking:

And don’t underestimate the power of your network. Keep in touch with your former colleagues and mentors during your travels and they can be extremely useful for opening up doors for you upon your return. LinkedIn makes this easier to do than ever.

And if you wish to seek employment from a firm that embraces the sabbatical mindset, YourSabbatical offers a comprehensive list of companies that do so.

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Next Steps: Getting Back to ‘Reality’ and Resumes

I used to hate it when people would say to me while I was traveling “What will you do when you get back? You have to get back to reality sometime.” This really got my blood boiling – what did they think that I was living at that moment…some kind of fantasy? My travels were reality; they were real, and they had become my lifestyle. Why did people feel the need to remind me that I must work again? I always felt those people who made ‘gotta get back to reality’ statements just said it to make themselves feel better about their unhappy life.

Regardless, I did go back to the US, but I decided to change my ‘reality’ – I didn’t go back to what I was doing. How could I? I had vastly changed in those 16 months. That made my next steps rather difficult because the only thing I knew for sure was that I didn’t want to go back to working for a large corporation in the US.

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