BootsnAll Travel Community

As in my earlier post, I say put it in. If you have a gap in your resume they are goint to ask you about it anyway. Better that they find out earlier and don't make you waste time with an uneeded interview if the trip is going to be a problem. Your trip is too long for this tip but for those with trips of a year or so, you don't have to put months in your work history section. If you just state the years where you worked at a given location, it can cover up the employment gap without being dishonest. Then if your trip does come up later you can talk about it then.

DJPerry, I'm in the same spot but here is what I am going to start out doing (if I don't get any responses, I will probably change my strategy):
I plan on putting my travels in on my resume and not dwell on it too much. I plan to put the time I was gone, the continents I went, and a quick line on why and what I got out of it. As of now it takes up 3 lines on the resume.

I'm doing this for the following reasons: with a gap on the resume, people will be wondering what happened there (unemployed?? travel?? living off of parents??), and I want to answer that question because in the end I don't want to work for a company (or a boss) that is not ok with my trip and I believe I got alot out of the trip.

So I'm gonna start by putting it on the resume because I am proud of it and I think it speaks a lot of who I am. Some may be not be sympathetic, but thats the price I pay I guess. If I don't get any response or little, I may change strategies.

Hopefully will start sending them out within the next week and I will keep you posted on what happens.....

quote:

So I'm gonna start by putting it on the resume because I am proud of it and I think it speaks a lot of who I am. Some may be not be sympathetic, but thats the price I pay I guess. If I don't get any response or little, I may change strategies.

Companies care about how well you can do the job they need you to do. It is nice to be sentimental and "speaks to who I am," but...they want to know how your experience is relevant to the job for which they are hiring.

When sending out a resume, you should tailor it for each separate position. You should use words & phrases that they use in their job posting. You should keep your resume to experience relevant to that job.

In your cover letter, you may want to talk about your previous job, and your trip, and how they will both help you to do the job at hand. Talk about it when they meet you. I wouldn't put it on your resume.

And, if you are just reentering the job market, please read "Knock 'em Dead" by Martin Yates.

There's a brief but encouraging article about returning to work after a long absence on today's CNN.

Wow, I'm dealing with similar issues now. I've shown my resume to most of my career-oriented friends, and most agree that the way I have my resume is good. I have a basic chronological resume, with my last job before my two years of traveling listed first, etc. Then, under my work experiences, I have a category called Personal Interests, which I have my travel experience, plus some volunteer stuff I did, about three bullets. It lists the dates that I was gone, where I went, and a short sentence about planning the trip, budgeting, and negotiating transport, etc.
I have also applied for a few travel industry related jobs, and my trip went first under Travel Experience, with bullets just like a job. But that was specifically for travel jobs only.
I also feel proud of my trip, and I am not embarrassed about it at all. However, I'd be lying if it was anything other than traveling. I didn't volunteer or save the world. I think its cool, but some people in career oriented society might not. I wouldn't want to work for a company like that anyway, but I also have to realize I might not get as many job opportunities. I have been out of work for almost 2 1/2 years now, so some people will have an issue. The gap is explainable, and not necessarily bad but still, its been a long time. I knew it would be hard though, I just didn't expect this kind of job market when I returned.
I have my own need of advice, and will post another topic if you could check that out. Thanks!

I've dealt with this issue, and it was a situation where I think I got a pretty good read on the market. I took an 18 month trip, around the US (not even RTW) and then came back to work... the job market I returned to was the same one I left.

I have a chronological resume, and I put the trip in there as "sabbatical" with the dates just as if it was a job entry. I listed the skills I picked up (I did teach myself skills relevant to my line of work while on the trip) and also a brief line describing the trip.

I didn't use it as a selling point in the resume (other than listing the skills) so I didn't try to BS about how the trip makes me a better employee, I just presented it as a perfectly natural stage in ones career.

I found that I had little trouble getting the next job. I would say that the results were slightly less than I would have expected if I'd gone right into the job market after my previous job. (EG: 7 interviews and 4 offers rather than 6 interviews and 4 offers and 2 callbacks.) So, it took me a week or two longer to line up my next job- well worth the tradeoff.

It may depend on the type of work you do, but a period not doing the work (unless its something that gets out of date) doesn't diminish the skills you had when you left.

Most common response when someone reads this on my resume was to ask me about the trip because *they* would like to do something like that- it's everyone's dream. I had a couple anecdotes that I was prepared to give succinctly-- this gives your interviewer a chance to live vicariously, and you a chance to establish rapport with them.

If someone asked if I was done traveling, I would have said "No, probably in 5 years or so I'll be ready for another trip, and this time I'm going to..." If they think that this shows disloyalty to the company, then I didn't want to work there anyway. (And as it turns out, its been well more than 5 years since this trip...)

Generally doing something like this shows initiative and I think it is a positive effect on your career potential... the extra week I spent looking for work could just be due to the jobs I was looking for or other factors.

But it also probably depends to some extent on how the general job market its, and what industry you're in. I'm in one that values independent thinkers who have initiative.

Also, I'd generally stay away from resume advice from headhunters. When I used to let headhunters have my resume they always wanted to make changes, and every time I did so at their request it resulted in a worse resume. Target your resume to the kind of people who will be hiring your position- their desires, not to headhunters. (Headhunters generally don't have the same motivations as hiring managers- hiring managers want to know if you can do the job and would be good at it, head hunters want to know if you have the right buzzwords for them to get a fat commission... ) Eventually I simply stopped using headhunters completely, as I found that the jobs they got were the ones where the company was having trouble filling it, and essentially this was due to it being a lower quality opportunity.

This experience gives you personality and flavor, and will be appealing to places that you want to work, and the ones who don't like it, or think its a detriment are ones where you probably don't want to work anyway because your personality is not the kind they are looking for. (EG: independent thinkers vs. rote-repeaters of training.)