Why you should highlight your travel skills in your CV

Travelling abroad can be a good investment for everyone, as it is an activity that not only brings you discover the world around you but also can help you understanding your inner self. Along with all the good experiences and memories, it can also improve mental well-being not just for the present.  Travelling can make you a happier person, providing new experiences and memories, breaking routine and allowing you to meet people from all over the world.

Whether you’re travels were a gap year or a career break, you will need to decided how you account for the time and experiences on your CV. The most important question that you must ask is: do you think the experiences you had travelling apply to you finding a new job in your field? If so, you can place it in the main part of your CV. If not, then it probably belongs in your “Hobbies” section or in “Additional Information”.

Volunteer work can be an excellent way to showcase key skills: the volunteer experience should be listed just like a job with a title that captures the essence of your role and a description which highlights skills applied and any accomplishments. If the volunteer work is unrelated to your job goal, you can incorporate it under a separate category like “Volunteer Experience”.

Make sure your examples are appropriate, employers don’t want to know how you have great interpersonal skills developed through meeting people in bars while on holiday in Ibiza. Think about how you can highlight the skills and experiences gained on your travels. It is highly likely you have used or developed some of the following:

• Self-management: is probably the most valuable and far-reaching skill. It is indispensable in anything you do, whether traveling, working, studying, or playing. When you travel  you often find yourself in random situations that lead you to challenge yourself and to go beyond your limits.

• Flexibility: travel presents one opportunity after another for you to strengthen your adaptability skills, as things rarely go as planned. A person who adapts well to different situations and can react accordingly already has the qualities of a leader.

• Organization and planning: traveling requires extremely careful organization and planning skills. You have to plan all in detail if you don’t want to find yourself in unpleasant situations. If you manage your budget incorrectly, you`ll have to survive in unknown places without money, and that may be really difficult. Therefore, going for a trip is a good way to master organization skills that`ll definitely help you at work.

• Creative Things: creative thinking involves brainstorming and generating new ideas, using imagination more freely, and making connections between ideas that seem unrelated. New sounds, smells, language, tastes, sensations, and sights spark different synapses in the brain and may have the potential to revitalize the mind.

• Networking and Communication: travel isn’t just about the places you visit and the photos you take: it’s just as much about the people you meet along the way as the ability to make life-long memories and friendships and share new experiences. In today’s society, many companies do business with foreign organizations or clients who don’t speak English as a first language. Being able to communicate with a wide range of people makes you an attractive candidate.

Stepping out of your comfort zone can provide inspiration, awareness, and ideas you wouldn’t likely consider if you continued following the same routine. But as you travel more and more often, you realize that you will no longer fear the unknown. You’ll approach every situation with an open mind, ready for new possibilities.