How will a travel sabbatical look on my resume?

Lots of people worry about gaps on resumes. I get it. I worried about this too when my husband and I were planning our trip around the world. But, at the end of the day, your resume isn’t what is going to land you your next role – your network is.

Did I use this photo to post a ton of LinkedIn articles about our trip? Um, yeah.

This means that you can play defense strategically and make sure your network understands what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and how you’ve changed because of it.

You can also play offense. Want to make sure your network will work for you when you are looking for your next role? Use the trip as an excuse to reach out beforehand. Before we left for our first stop, Italy, I made a big list of everyone I wanted to be sure to keep in touch with. Not all were people I’d talked to in the last year, but I used the news of the trip as a reason to reach out and sent text messages, LinkedIn messages, and emails to make sure I had a positive touch point with some of the most powerful parts of my network. Then, when I needed their help 10 months later, I avoided the awkwardness of reaching out to people I hadn’t talked to in a long time, because I had just chatted with them less than a year prior.

Finding ways to keep in touch during the trip – especially passive ways like posting to a colleague-friendly Instagram account – can help keep your networking thinking of you in a low-effort, organic way. Plus, any doubters will surely start to understand how incredible a travel sabbatical can be once you start posting your amazing pictures in the African savannah, in Ha Long Bay, or surfing in Bali.

Above all – take a step back and realize that while finding a job after a career break is a hurdle you’ll need to overcome, it also provides immense benefits for your career search directly. You can decide to take any portion of your trip to focus on the job search. This means that you can set yourself up for success not just to find a job after your trip but to find the best job you can find.

Here are a few things I did to make sure I’d land a great position when we returned:

1. I took time to analyze compensation, benefits, and other perks that different companies I was interested in offered. It turned out that a good portion of the companies near the top of my list (originally) offered terrible benefits and compensation relative to what I could get elsewhere. I had no idea! And, it helped immensely to have a lot of free evenings to investigate this and figure it out.

2. Six months before our planned return date, I started networking. I found friends and friends of friends at the list of companies that did well in my compensation and benefits analysis to secure referrals for when I’d start officially applying.

3. I took a lot of time to hone my resume, to brainstorm interview questions and answers, and to practice my elevator pitch. Time is on your side during a travel sabbatical, and I was able to prepare far more extensively than I could have if I were applying while working at an intense job.

Yes, taking a sabbatical is a risk. Yes, you’ll want to explain it on your resume. But, there are tons of advantages that can actually help your next job search if you look below the surface.

Happy searching!