Posts Tagged ‘resume’

Favorite Tips: Updating Your Resume Before Your Travels
Friday, January 23rd, 2015

Now that you’ve made the decision to take career break and travel I, bet you have an extensive Excel sheet with all the items you need to pack and do before you go away.

  • Do a test pack of backpack to make sure it’s not too heavy – Check
  • Make extra copies of visas and passport – Check
  • Create blog to stay in touch with family & friends – Check
  • Update resume – wait, what?!?!?!?!

I know you just left your job and can’t wait to focus on your travels, but updating your resume before you leave is one of the best pre-trip activities you can do. In his post, “How My Career Break Helped My Career”, Michael Bontempi noted:

I developed a resume prior to leaving to ensure that my latest accomplishments were fresh in my mind.

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Working While on a Career Break
Wednesday, July 11th, 2012

outdoor office

Yes, you read that title correctly, no need to rub your eyes and refocus. I know what you are thinking – “You told us that we needed to get away from work and take a break in order slow down, clear your mind, and see the world. Why would we consider working during our career break? Doesn’t that defeat the whole purpose?”

Every situation is different and there are many reasons why someone may want to work on a while on a career break:

• Some people don’t have enough time to save the necessary money for their career break so they need to generate income while they travel.
• You want to dabble in and explore a new career while you are taking a break from your old one.
• You want to dig deeper into a culture and learn about what it’s like to stay longer or work in a place.
• You want to keep your expenses down while you travel.
• You want to meet more locals and have local experiences.

The main goal of a career break should be to take a break from your everyday life and your routine. You want to shake things up and get away from the daily grind so that you can free your mind and provide space to think and process things – this is when you start to reap the benefits of a career break. The key is getting away, and what you do when you get away is up to you.

As Jonah Lehrer writes in a piece for the Guardian,

“Several new science papers suggest that getting away – and it doesn’t even matter where you’re going – is an essential habit of effective thinking.”

For those of you who fall into the myriad of situations that cause someone to want to work on a career break, then we have some resources for you as you look for work during your break.

Working for Reduced Expenses

HelpX is a site where people ask for help, and you work in exchange for lodging and sometimes food. In a typical HelpX arrangement, the helper works an average of 4 hours per day and receives free accommodation and meals for their efforts. Note that a real salary is not really paid typically – but you do cut your travel expenses drastically by not paying for lodging.

The opportunities on HelpX range from handyman/woman work at hostels and guest houses, to social media help for small business, to crewing boats, riding horses, and fruit picking. To get a better idea of what opportunities they list, take a look at a few of their  international listings.

Think good Thoughts

Working for a Salary

If you think you are looking for a real salary and something more permanent then check out this comprehensive article about How to Make a Living on the Road. It provides inspirational stories and detailed information about what kind of careers are good for making money on the road and what you may expect to make in a year. In addition, it provides some stellar advice on how to get over fear in making any big change in your life.

“Fear and taking a leap – fear has a way of fermenting in your mind, the longer you sit and think something over, the more likely you are to allow all of the things that could go wrong pile up in the back of your head until you’re paralyzed by your worst enemy, your own imagination in fear mode.“

Finding Work Via Networking on the Road

Our Meet Plan Go Chicago Host, Lisa Lubin, is a career break veteran who worked her way around the world just using her own personal networks. After all, traveling is about meeting people, and when you can meet local people and expats, then your work opportunities really open up. She found random opportunities from working for Turkey’s largest media conglomerate, to doing research at the University of Cologne, to landing a year-long freelance gig doing publicity for an English Immersion program based in Madrid. The key – you have to make an effort to meet locals and be open to possibilities.

Another resource worth noting is Transitions Abroad – which offers article, resources, and programs for those interested in finding work overseas.

All of this working while on career break just broadens your horizons and increases your experience for your resume when you return.  In fact – you may find that you like it so much that you don’t want to quit!

Travel Makes Better Executives
Monday, May 14th, 2012

As a long term traveler on sabbatical, I am occasionally asked, “Are you concerned about coming back to work?  How will you explain the large gap in your resume?

Each time this question is posed, I calmly reply “of course not.” As the months have passed, some of the lessons I’ve learned are easier to articulate than others. Nevertheless, here are five skills that I have tuned while traveling. I am sure that these skills will make me a more confident executive leader and apply to other travelers as well.

Separate the Wheat from the Chaff

At some point every executive has had to make a decision with less information than would be considered prudent. In a complex business environment, executives need strong analytical skills for sure, but the best leaders regularly listen to their intuition. As Malcom Gladwell describes in his book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, we do that by “thin-slicing,” using limited information to come to our conclusion.

In what Gladwell contends is an age of information overload, he finds that experts often make better decisions with snap judgments than they do with volumes of analysis. He also mentions that sometimes having too much information can interfere with the accuracy of a judgment, or a doctor’s diagnosis. This is commonly called Analysis paralysis.

The challenge is to sift through and focus on only the most critical information to make a decision. The other information may be irrelevant and confusing to the decision maker. Collecting more and more information, in most cases, just reinforces our judgment but does not help to make it more accurate.”

The book argues that intuitive judgment is developed by experience, training, and knowledge. Travelers thin-slice every time they choose to hire a tuk-tuk, accept a gift from a local, or share a drink with new friends.

Mystic Connection with Nature

Steven R. Covey wrote that “[e]very human has four endowments- self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom… The power to choose, to respond, to change.” Further, he shares that “[t]he way we see the problem is the problem.”

It follows then that with an awareness of the true nature of universal timeless principles, we can alter reality. As a traveler, you are frequently vulnerable. We can choose to see power in this vulnerability or we can find weakness. Specifically, vulnerability exposes us to scams, theft, and crime. Vulnerability also inspires a heightened sense of awareness and curiosity that helps us embody true “presence” or appreciation or our surroundings.

Super Human Hops

As a traveler you are often faced with unique situations leaving few resources at your disposal. Even the best planned itinerary can result in flight cancellations, unexpected bus delays, or an unforeseen arrival during a regional celebration or workforce strike.

Finding solutions to travel surprises expands confidence in out-of-the-box thinking, and reinforces creative problem solving skills.

Having the confidence to hurdle over unexpected challenges makes the difference between an average worker and an exceptional team contributor.

Stomp Out Insecurity

Until your team feels trusted, understood, valued, and enabled, synergistic results will remain elusive.

Insecurity is that feeling inside us that prevents us from becoming deeply empathic listeners. If we are to cultivate empowered teams which operate over the foundation of high trust relationships, deliver passionate contributions, and produce synergistic results – insecurity must be at a minimum.

Through an exposure to foreign religions, manners, and cultural norms we naturally gain an appreciation for varied cultural views. This appreciation shifts the fulcrum allowing increased understanding and reduced fear. By eliminating fear we can stomp out insecurity.

Multiple Perspectives

As mentioned earlier, empathic listening is critical to success in an interdependent reality. To achieve empathic communication at least one party must be engaged in seeing reality from multiple perspectives. It is only by reflecting content and feeling, accurately and completely, that communication barriers are replaced with profound understanding. Having awareness and being centered in compassion are the first two requirements for such understanding.

Travel long enough and you will eventually find yourself a sleep-deprived, under-fed traveler whose fate depends on the services of an under-paid, under-appreciated, and under-educated world citizen. In these scenarios, empathic communication will often make the difference between a seat on a train, a room in a hostel, or a bite to eat and utter frustration. Through necessity travelers develop empathic listening skills.

In the end, travel creates executives equipped to achieve synergistic results through heightened awareness, empathic communication, and out-of-the-box thinking. With practice, these individuals can be shown to make quality decisions given limited information. Now that’s a leader worth hiring!

Matthew K. Sharp is the co-founder of Inertia Interrupted and is currently trekking, volunteering, diving and photographing the world with his wife, Luz.  You can connect with him on Facebook and follow him on Twitter.

How to Account for a Career Break on Your Resume
Monday, April 16th, 2012

You arrive home at the end of a life-changing travel experience and one of the biggest questions facing you likely will be how to find work again. Whether you traveled as part of a career break, gap year, or sabbatical, you will need to figure out how to best represent the time and experiences on your resume.

Where should it go on my resume?

It depends. Do you think the experiences you had traveling apply to you finding a new job in your field?  If so, then place it in the main part of your resume. If you don’t feel like it applies, then it probably belongs in a section reserved for Additional Information or Hobbies.

Kristin Zibell of Takeyourbigtrip.com is a frequent career breaker and she keeps her resume flexible saying,

I found the recruiters and hiring managers were looking for the professional story in my resume. Every statement on my resume needed to support this story and show a situation, action, and results.  If my travels and experiences had a direct relationship to the position, like my blogging or volunteering abroad, then I listed it like a position. Most of the time, I found that travel was an interesting fact about me and explained the time gaps, but not directly related to the positions. In this case, I placed my travel experiences at the bottom in an ‘Additional Activities’ section that colored who I was and what I had done.

Kristin’s resume highlights her travels as international experience:

? Ten months of travel to India, Nepal, Southeast Asia, Middle East, and Europe from October 2008 to May 2010.

? Activities included volunteer work at Mother Teresa Mission Charities in Kolkata with disabled women and teaching English to street children in Jaipur.

? Designed and authored three travel blogs during multi-month these solo trips. Currently editor of Takeyourbigtrip.com.

What type of information should I share about my travels?

It’s probably NOT a good idea to put that you were a beach bum for 12 months, or that you traveled the full moon party circuit. Instead, think about what you did on your travels that had to do with education, skill building, volunteering, and business skills and highlight them in a professional manner. But there are some other skills you might want to consider:

Volunteering
One should always represent any volunteering done while traveling on their resume. It demonstrates a commitment to education, giving back to other cultures, and global experience. You should always include where your volunteering took place, what your responsibilities were, and if there was any end result. The end results could be tangible things such as building a house, cleaning up after a natural disaster, or restoring wetlands.

If not covered somewhere else in your resume, also consider including any resume building intangible results such as improved leadership skills, proven ability to take initiative, as well as listening and communication skills. Finally, if your volunteering was for an extended period of time such as 6 months to a year, then consider putting this experience in your work or education history.

Working
More and more people are working while they travel. Work that is relevant to your field is important to highlight. Did you do any freelance work, consulting, working at a hostel, or teaching ESL?  If so, this can belong in your work history.

Meet, Plan, Go! co-founder Sherry Ott highlighted her various work experiences as international work experience:

ESL Instructor: ILA Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City

?  Teaching adults English as a Second Language (ESL).

Consultant:  CAMENAE, Singapore

?  Delivered a usability analysis of the e-commerce site and led subsequent redesign.
?  Conducted tests and created a regression test plan.
?  Consult with owners on their business vision and ensure that it can be supported on the site.  Offer guidance on short and long term business plans and their technical implementation.

Blogging
Did you blog, write for publications, or do photography; all of these things illustrate that you took your travels seriously. Think about the new skills you learned when maintaining your blog. Did you increase your knowledge about Search Engine Optimization, marketing/sales of affiliate programs, coding, and social media tools?

Laura Keller did a career break with her husband Ryan and blogged about it at www.roundwego.com. She represented her blogging in the following way:

Digital Entrepreneur, Travel Blogger & World Explorer

? Expanded economic and cultural views while exploring 20 countries in 14 months of extensive travel across six continents
? Created, launched and hosted the travel website RoundWeGo.com, attracting 10,000 unique monthly visitors
? Governed online traffic, social media and SEO to create advertising and sponsorship revenue for RoundWeGo.com
? Contributed travel articles to leading lifestyle and travel Web sites and blogs

Talking about the soft skills

Even if all you did was lounge around a beach all day and drink beer, you picked up some business skills while traveling around the world.  It’s hard to think about the mundane day-to-day experiences as skill building, but they are. There are a lot of business skills you can learn without actually having gone to business school. In fact, these “business skills” are simply important life skills that can give you an edge:

Negotiation skills – All that time spent in markets haggling over the cost of a magnet was beneficial.  You were exposed to and employed various negotiation tactics that can be highlighted. Businesses want people who are sharp negotiators and can make deals not people who are push overs.
? Budgeting and Planning – You most likely had to plan and save for your career break.  In addition, you continue to monitor your budget and assess any financial risks.
? Adaptability – When you travel, things go wrong, plans change, there are mudslides that you can’t predict.  As a traveler you are forced to change plans constantly.  You handle the issues that are hurdled your way quickly after a few months on the road. In the ever changing world of business, the ability to adapt is important.
? Communication  – When trying to converse in foreign cultures every verbal and non-verbal communication is necessary to overcome language and cultural barriers. This skill is helps you deal with people which is an important aspect of any job. Workers with good communication skills are the ones who rise fast.

All of these new skills belong on your resume. And when you are asked about them in an interview, you’ll be able to share an amazing story about “that time in Vietnam…” when a skill came in handy and how it can help you in your job.

Bottom Line

Use your travel to make you stand out. Keep in mind that many of these experiences, if described in a professional manner, will make you stand out from other candidates.

Don’t hide your travel when searching for a job; embrace it!

 

Marketing Your Career Break
Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012

How to market your career break, prepare your resume and incorporate your career break into interviews.

Before You Leave

1. Choose your itinerary with some thought about coming back to the workforce. All of these ideas can be highlighted on a resume or in an interview with a little creative forethought. Travel can be about building skillsets, and soft skills which are valued in the workplace.

• Include volunteering
• Learn how to blog
• Sign up for and learn how to utilize social networks
• Improve a skill such as a foreign language, photography, business through microfinancing, sailing, or cooking.
• Include some countries on your itinerary based on cultures you interact with in the workplace currently. For example, does your company manufacture something in China, or do you outsource resources from India; then these could be great cultures to explore and learn more about on your career break.

2. Update your resume with your most recent work experience! This is crucial to do now before you start traveling and forget the details of what you used to do.

3. Contact your business contacts and let them know that you are leaving to travel and why you have chosen to do so. Let them know the additional skills you expect to gain while traveling and when you expect to return back to connect with them again on a professional level.

While On The Road

1. Periodically stay in contact with colleagues and provide them updates of your travels and experiences. This will keep those networking and communication ties open. This can be as simple as keeping a blog or sending out a monthly email to friends and colleagues recapping your experiences.

2. A few months before returning:

• Take stock of what you have learned and how you have changed. What soft skills have you gained.
• Updating your resume with some of your travel experiences.
• Reach out to your networks and let them know that you’ll be returning shortly and looking for employment.
• Start communicating with recruiters.

When You Return

1. Consider what your goal is:
• Do you want to return to the ‘Briefcase’ on the same career track?
• Do you want to return to the ‘Briefcase’ but on a different career track?
• Do you want to utilize your skills and talents to pursue freelance work?
• Do you want to pick up the ‘Backpack’ and never return to corporate?

This is not a quick, or easy decision to make. It often takes a lot of soul searching and potentially negotiating with a significant other. The main thing is to not force a decision if you don’t have an answer. If the answer isn’t coming to you, then simply dip your toe into all of the options, send out resumes, and see where it lands you.

2. Update Your Resume:
You don’t 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.

3. Prepare for Interviews:
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.

4. Have a Positive and Confident Attitude about your Career Break Experience:
One of the most important things to possess as you are working your way back into the workforce again is to have confidence in your ability to do so. If you don’t believe that your career break was beneficial and you are simply trying to create a sales pitch, then it won’t be as successful.

Be proud of the experience and include it on your LinkedIn profile and Facebook Timeline.

As you converse with future employers and network with colleagues, you must ooze confidence about your career break. No regrets!

We get more in depth on how to market your career break and prepare for interviews in our Career Break Basic Training.

Kick Ass Hosts: Paul & Christine Milton
Wednesday, June 15th, 2011

All of our local kick-ass Meet, Plan, Go! hosts have inspiring stories of their own career break travels. In the time leading up to our National Event in October we will introduce them to you so you can see why they are part of our team.

Meet our Kick-Ass Seattle Hosts: Paul & Christine Milton

Seattle Hosts

Michaela & Sherry join Christine (left) and Paul Milton (right) at a recent meetup

Long term travel is an amazing experience. It’s captivating, educational, challenging, and inspirational. Those who have done it have laptops and smartphones full of photos of far away places and email addresses from those whom they’ve spent a few days with; sharing taxis, hostels, hikes, museums, beach side bars and overnight trains.

Let’s face it. Most of us aren’t witty travel writers and we’re not glamorous TV stars. We’re not going to spend the rest of our lives traveling the world, submitting creative blog posts or poignant documentaries from exotic distant lands. Of course there are those doing it, but they’re the minority in the global travel community.

The travel community is made up of people like you and me. Most who mark the calendars, strap on a backpack and look forward to scuba diving, mountain trekking and passport stamps are the temporary traveller. We’re able to take 3-12 months and head out into the world – seeking to learn about the unknown in other countries, and deep within ourselves. Sooner or later, the trip will come to a conclusion and you’ll be back in the job market, nervously anticipating sitting across the table from a prospective employer in an interview.

Was your trip a waste of time? Was it a job killer?

Honestly . . . no.

It was the best thing you‘ve ever done and just the thing that you’re new company is looking for.

Christine and I left Seattle in July 2009 and travelled for 18 months, returning this past January,
2011. With what we’ve done and where we’ve been, we were ready for what lay ahead.

Think about the basics of interviewing and the questions that are presented. It readily becomes a question of not, what do I say, but rather what cool story of my travels will best summarize my abilities to handle whatever this company has in store for me.

“Tell me about a stressful time and how you resolved it”:

How about the time in Athens when the port workers went on strike and the ferries sat empty,
forcing us to quickly change our transportation plans to include a train and a bus to get to a
different ferry in a town hours away enabling us to continue on our journey, making sure we
stayed ahead of the wave of thousands of others travellers who need to do the same.

“How do you adapt to new situations”?

Every situation is a new situation while traveling. Where to go, how you get there, where to
sleep, what to see, where to eat. . . . sometimes even how to eat! Travellers are continually in
a revolving door of temporary friendships and meeting fellow travellers from different countries,
ethnic backgrounds, ages and mindsets.

Many travellers know what it’s like, stepping down from a train in a town who’s name they can’t
pronounce, in a country they’ve never been to, trying to find the hostel or guesthouse, then locate a good plate of street food and a cold beer.

“How do you handle conflict”?

Tell them about being in Cairo and fare haggling with taxi drivers, the servers who demand an
extra tip stating that the one on the bill is “for the kitchen staff” or dealing with the manipulative
and pushy perfume and papyrus vendors?

How do you work in a team environment?:

How about learning to travel with your spouse, and the demands and conflicts that arise from
spending 24/7 together.

“Tell us about the time you went outside your comfort zone”

. . . . boy, where do I begin!

Listen to your inner self, the thoughts in your head. Quit your job and travel the world. It could
be the best job decision you’ve ever made.

Check out the Seattle event details.

How To Find a Job While on a Career Break
Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

“What are you going to do when you come back?” said my friend with her head tilted sideways; a concerned and perplexed look on her face.

I felt like this scene was a video caught in a loop as I planned my career break for the year leading up to my departure. It was nice that everyone was concerned about my well-being, but every time someone asked that question, it tied my stomach in yet another knot.

I didn’t know the beauty of ‘not knowing’ then. I was still in my ‘I must be in control’ mode. Slowly my traveling career break peeled away each hyper-planning layer of my personality and left me with delicious ambiguity.

It was that delicious ambiguity that helped me land my next job while I was on my career break. Yes – that’s right, my career break actually helped me find my next job(s).

An expat friend I had met while traveling heard I used to work at a luxury handbag company prior to becoming a career breaker. Upon hearing this she decided she should introduce me to two women who had started CAMENAE , an Italian luxury handbag business managed out of Singapore and Saigon. (Actually the manufacturing is all done in Italy, but the owners live in Singapore and Saigon!)

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How to Make Your Travels Part of Your Career Brand
Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010

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.

CareerSparxABOUT 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.

Next Steps: Career Choices & Resources
Monday, October 26th, 2009

[singlepic=1568,300,,,right]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:

Executive Search Firms:

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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Michael Bontempi: How My Career Break Helped My Career
Monday, July 20th, 2009

[singlepic=323,400,,,right]The decision to take my career break began in August of 2007. I had reached an impasse in my career as a management consultant with my current employer and had decided it was time for me to pursue a new organization to continue my career path. For most people, the typical approach to leaving a job is to remain in their current position as they seek other opportunities. For me, I knew if I continued in my current position, my daily responsibilities would continue to take top priority over seeking a new opportunity. I’m not sure if this is a character flaw or my sense of dedication and work ethic, so I knew that taking a break was my best alternative.

What amazed me the most was the number of colleagues who advised me to take the typical approach to leaving a job. Of course for many of them, there were other responsibilities (spouse, children, mortgage) that I did not have to consider as part of my decision. But in the end, the choice to leave without another position secured did seem incredibly risky.

By nature, I’m not the most foolish individual, nor do I avoid a new challenge. I consider myself a prudent saver and investor, so I took this opportunity to invest in myself for a period of time. I wanted some time to examine what I had accomplished in my career and begin to understand not only my strengths and weaknesses, but also what were the characteristics I would be looking for in new position and employer.

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Career Break Guide Table of Contents

Meet Plan Go