Career Break

With long-term travel comes discomfort, uncertainty and ultimate responsibility for everything that goes on in your life, which is always the case of course but when you are at home you might have people who help you out make you dinner, give you a ride or buy you a ticket to the game. Plenty of people are willing to help you out while you are traveling. An incredible amount actually but it is not something you can count on like close friends or family. It is different. And being truly on your own, in a strange country without hotel reservations or signs in English, can be uncomfortable.

Being disconnected may have its merits but it wore me down over the months. Granted, I was connected to the Internet more days than not. I could email, social media and connect to my friends and family most of the time. But everyone is still back home and you are still out there.

You do not have to hide your career break, you should address it. You may want a number of versions of how you address it depending on the jobs you are applying for.

★ Include a short section about your career break and if you did any work related activities during that time (volunteering, teaching, freelancing, ran a blog).

★ Include an area/continent that you focused on especially if it has ties to your work in some way. I was in IT and often worked with outsourcing firms in India so highlighting my world experience was key.

★ Soft skills are most every career breaker will return with better soft skills acquired from their time on the road. Key areas involve - Risk taker, negotiation skills, flexibility, patience, adapt quickly to changing environments, and enhanced decisions making. In my opinion, much of these skills fall into one important area in business - leadership.

★ List your travel website if you feel it is professional enough to mention.

★ Look over it with a critical business eye before touting it on your resume.

Research as much as you can about the career and sector you want to return to. The biggest obstacle people face after having a career break is being left behind as technology or processes move on, so ensure you know about all the market trends.

A simple way to get this information is to sign up for industry newsletters or follow blogs. This way you can have a small daily dose of news, which quickly adds up to a lot of knowledge.

Before you start down the social networking route, check that you would be happy for potential employers to see your online profiles. If not, clean up or delete.

Volunteering is also a good way to ease yourself back into the work environment and when you get a job it won't be such a culture shock. But if you are claiming benefits, make sure you check to see if there are any limitations on what you can do.

Before you start getting ready to return to work, it is worth having a think about your situation. Potential employers will ask why you took the break, what you did and also why you want to come back. Consider your answers to these questions. They are not trick questions but if you do not think about how you would answer them, you can quickly look suspect.

Another thing to consider is what type of work you want to do. Do not just start applying in a panic, think about the hours, location and sector of your next employment. Again, if an employer does not think you are serious about the application, they will assume you are preparing to take another break and so will focus on another candidate.

If your career break was a significant amount of time, it will look odd if you do not include some information about what you got up to on your resume. If you did not have any employment, include a 'relevant experience' section. Ensure that anything listed is tied in with a desirable characteristic for an employee. Alternatively, if you were incredibly busy, list events as if they were a job, summarizing what skills you learnt along the way.

The experience and skills you gained before the break are important too, so ensure you highlight them. Make sure you really emphasis your achievements, it does not matter if they took place a year ago, you still achieved it.

If the gaps in your resume make you uncomfortable, try using a functional resume format instead. This focuses on skills and experience rather than dates of job titles. This is not for everyone, so do some research first.

Understand how your travels contribute to who you are. This may take some careful retrospection, however if you kept a blog or journal while traveling it may become a bit easier. Consider what you learned in the various countries and cultures you experienced and how would that apply to doing business internationally.

Examine your experiences and then try to the following questions:

★ How have my life-goals changed?

★ How have my career goals changed?

★ What qualities have I strengthened to make me a better team player?

★ What qualities have I strengthened to make me a better leader?

Next consider what questions you will be asked in a typical interview and have answers prepared and practiced for these types of questions:

★ Why did you decide to take a career break and travel?

★ What was the most memorable experience and why?

★ Did you have any important revelations?

★ Why are you back?

Keep in mind the company may think that taking a career break is irresponsible and means you could leave them at a moments notice too, therefore, be prepared to explain how loyal and committed you are.