When you return home, you need to reenter the workforce. No more being your own boss, but you will have a new perspective on employment. A new appreciation for your career. And hopefully a new sense of purpose. You knocked out one of your major life goals, now it’s time to focus on a second life goal, a successful career.
You need to update your resume. The resume needs to address the time period that you traveled around the world—after all, it is your last place of employment. Interviewers will ask about your trip. Three years from now. Five years from now. Ten years from now. The travel will continue to appear as an outlier on your resume. It will cost you some jobs. It will help you when applying for others.
When updating your resume and preparing how to explain the travel work experience in an interview, the best option is to be honest with yourself, your trip, and its purpose. My trip was more than moving from country to country, drinking, and dining. I pursued a lifetime goal. I turned the trip into an educational experience. It was a personal MBA. I operated the trip like running a business and learned key business lessons that others in the business world never experience. I was my own boss. I managed my own budget. I tried creating a business. I failed at creating a business. I wrote about my experiences, not just in a blog, but with a book and had articles that appeared in national publications. For all these factors to be honest…the writing and website need to have a level of quality and substance that legitimizes the claims in the resume. There actually needs to be evidence that you understood where you traveled. If you say you wrote a book, you need to write a book.
If a grander purpose for the trip was not the case…if the purpose of the trip was solely about being burned out from the daily grind and a respite was needed…state that the trip was a gap year. Don’t oversell the experience on your resume and embellish stories during the interview. I knew the purpose of my trip from the beginning and stayed true throughout—I didn’t try and add a different meaning or purpose at the end out of fear of how someone may interpret the experience when reviewing my resume. Great managers at great companies take breaks. Maybe not a year in length, so be prepared to explain why you went for a longer period, but a career break is a legitimate and accepted concept over the course of a forty-year career.
Being honest is the best resume and job search approach because there’s no definitive way of knowing how a hiring manager or human resources will evaluate your resume. No one knows how human resources evaluates a standard resume let alone a resume with a unique outlying experience. There’s no way of knowing whether taking time off to travel will enhance or hinder your professional experience. If you apply for 100 jobs and 5 reply back, there’s no way to know if those other 95 companies questioned your commitment and focus or if your resume fell into the human resources’ abyss. I didn’t worry about the ramifications of someone evaluating my trip negatively when I started applying for jobs and I don’t worry about it now.
I believe that any person pursuing their dreams and life goals, including taking time off to start their own business or focus on a passion project, will be a better employee than someone who hasn't taken that chance or that risk. Believing in yourself and pursuing your passion is an employment selling point. My perspective was that if a company had an issue with my travels...I wouldn't be a good fit. If 95 companies didn’t like that I traveled around the world, then that’s 95 companies where I wouldn’t be a good fit. Both the company and I were saved from years of employment frustration.
When searching for a job the best place to start is with the company you left. Hopefully you realize in hindsight your job wasn’t that bad. Hopefully you left on good terms, can slide back into the daily work routine, and not miss a beat.
Some interview preparation talking points:
Before I traveled around the world, all I thought about at work was traveling around the world. Now that I’m back, all I think about at work…is work. And that’s a good thing for both my company and me.
You need to update your resume. The resume needs to address the time period that you traveled around the world—after all, it is your last place of employment. Interviewers will ask about your trip. Three years from now. Five years from now. Ten years from now. The travel will continue to appear as an outlier on your resume. It will cost you some jobs. It will help you when applying for others.
When updating your resume and preparing how to explain the travel work experience in an interview, the best option is to be honest with yourself, your trip, and its purpose. My trip was more than moving from country to country, drinking, and dining. I pursued a lifetime goal. I turned the trip into an educational experience. It was a personal MBA. I operated the trip like running a business and learned key business lessons that others in the business world never experience. I was my own boss. I managed my own budget. I tried creating a business. I failed at creating a business. I wrote about my experiences, not just in a blog, but with a book and had articles that appeared in national publications. For all these factors to be honest…the writing and website need to have a level of quality and substance that legitimizes the claims in the resume. There actually needs to be evidence that you understood where you traveled. If you say you wrote a book, you need to write a book.
If a grander purpose for the trip was not the case…if the purpose of the trip was solely about being burned out from the daily grind and a respite was needed…state that the trip was a gap year. Don’t oversell the experience on your resume and embellish stories during the interview. I knew the purpose of my trip from the beginning and stayed true throughout—I didn’t try and add a different meaning or purpose at the end out of fear of how someone may interpret the experience when reviewing my resume. Great managers at great companies take breaks. Maybe not a year in length, so be prepared to explain why you went for a longer period, but a career break is a legitimate and accepted concept over the course of a forty-year career.
Being honest is the best resume and job search approach because there’s no definitive way of knowing how a hiring manager or human resources will evaluate your resume. No one knows how human resources evaluates a standard resume let alone a resume with a unique outlying experience. There’s no way of knowing whether taking time off to travel will enhance or hinder your professional experience. If you apply for 100 jobs and 5 reply back, there’s no way to know if those other 95 companies questioned your commitment and focus or if your resume fell into the human resources’ abyss. I didn’t worry about the ramifications of someone evaluating my trip negatively when I started applying for jobs and I don’t worry about it now.
I believe that any person pursuing their dreams and life goals, including taking time off to start their own business or focus on a passion project, will be a better employee than someone who hasn't taken that chance or that risk. Believing in yourself and pursuing your passion is an employment selling point. My perspective was that if a company had an issue with my travels...I wouldn't be a good fit. If 95 companies didn’t like that I traveled around the world, then that’s 95 companies where I wouldn’t be a good fit. Both the company and I were saved from years of employment frustration.
When searching for a job the best place to start is with the company you left. Hopefully you realize in hindsight your job wasn’t that bad. Hopefully you left on good terms, can slide back into the daily work routine, and not miss a beat.
Some interview preparation talking points:
- Once you’ve traveled around the world, not much will faze you. If you can book an Indian train ticket and spend the night in an Indian train station, you can handle anything. Steve Jobs went to India and returned a changed person.
- Many employees wish they could be somewhere else other than the office—I am the only candidate that can say “if I wanted to be somewhere else I would…if I wanted to be on a beach in Bali, I would…I want to be working here.”
- Athletes who perform at a peak level develop skill sets that are transferable from the playing field to the board room. Look at the dedication and focus of Michael Phelps. Nobody argued that Michael Phelps should have spent more time studying and focusing on a 9-5 job than in the pool. Around the world travel is your Olympic-like experience. It doesn’t require innate athletic ability, but valuable skill sets are developed and sharpened during your travels.
- There are countries where listening to the news or reading a book doesn’t suffice. For example, China. It’s 2020, you need direct exposure to China. You can’t rely on what other people say and write about China. You need you own, experience influenced opinion.
- You’ve seen the big picture and how world is interconnected. You’ve seen that there's literally over two billion people who can take the job of anyone working in America; that these two billion people can perform this work remotely in India, China, Indonesia, the Philippines, etc. That tariffs won’t stop globalization. Knowing this should give you an edge, it should increase your competitive spirit which makes you a better employee.
Before I traveled around the world, all I thought about at work was traveling around the world. Now that I’m back, all I think about at work…is work. And that’s a good thing for both my company and me.