5 Important Benefits of Travelling on Your Career
Balancing work and travel can seem like an ongoing juggling act, but by combining both, you’ll find there are numerous benefits of travelling on your work life.
On the one hand, you worry that the career you’ve worked so hard on may be at stake if you step away from it for a while.
But on the other hand, you often think, “I want to see and experience more.”
We’re here to tell you that one doesn’t need to be at the expense of the other, and in fact, they complement each other.
It’s not easy to strike that balance between work and personal life, especially when you’ve got multiple responsibilities. That being said, travelling doesn’t stand at odds with your career.
In fact, many believe that taking time off for travel can improve your life and career prospects in the long run, as it gives you an edge over other job applicants in ways you may not initially think.
But, more importantly, travelling is about you.
Not your career, your boss, or money. It’s about using this one life as an opportunity to explore and experience.
Travel opens more doors than it closes, and there are more avenues to walk down than dead ends to return from.
So, if you’ve decided to schedule some time to travel, let us put your mind at ease. You’ve made the right decision; here are six benefits of travelling and why travelling is good for your CV.
Travelling broadens your world view
In an internationally connected world, you need to have the ability to connect with people from other countries and cultures.
One of the benefits of travelling is that it allows you to expand your worldview through experience, become a global citizen, and see the world through a different lens.
The way you work, or the way you see the world, is just one perspective. It’s your truth. It takes seeing a new perspective to understand someone else’s truth, which is an invaluable skill in the workplace. You’ll find that a day at summer camp is a very different experience from a day at an office in the UK.
By getting out of your comfort zone and meeting people with different ideas and perspectives, you learn about the norms and values held elsewhere, which can positively influence your approach to life.
Travelling allows you to develop key soft skills
Empathy, adaptability, resilience, communication. These things can’t just be researched; you must get out there and practice them.
You’ll face challenges when travelling; it’s not all sunshine and rainbows.
It sounds strange to say, “put yourself in the way of challenges”, but it’s what you need to do to grow.
You can’t become resilient if you’ve had nothing to be resilient against. You can’t learn to be adaptable if you stay in the same environment.
Challenges lay just outside your comfort zone, and those challenges will help you develop personally and professionally.
These are valuable soft skills that can help you succeed in any field, but they’re skills that most people don’t get to develop while they’re in school or at home.
It’s a key component of why travelling is good for your CV.
Travelling encourages a new sense of purpose
Every conversation is an opportunity to learn something new.
You’ll find yourself immersed in influences, both good and bad. You’ll learn there are certain things you like and certain things you don’t.
Travel has a habit of peeling back the layers. You’ve not got the same voices swaying you, nor the same media or environment around you. It tends to be a real eye-opener, allowing you to see your ideal path much clearer.
You draw upon your experiences to help you find a purpose which directly impacts your career.
A new sense of purpose provides clarity of vision and newfound determination, which is hard to spark without travel or experiences.
Travelling helps you discover who you are
This sounds deep, and it is.
One of the key benefits of travelling, and more so for a longer time, is that it shows who you are. What do you like, what do you miss, what drives you?
It shows you what you’re good at and maybe not so good at. Who you gravitate towards, and what makes you feel alive.
Plus, the bad teaches you just as much as the good.
It could be that you’re not a great organiser or don’t enjoy it. You may prefer ‘doing’ instead of ‘seeing’, as you’re active.
For those who journal, travel is a goldmine of emotion. Dig long enough, and you’ll find answers you didn’t know were there.
Travelling helps you become a more well-rounded professional
The days of worrying about explaining travel on a CV are over.
It’s outdated. Yes, you travelled. Why was that a bad thing? Why was travelling to the other side of the planet, sometimes to make a difference in a role such as volunteering or summer camp, a bad thing? Why was getting new experiences and growing as a person ever considered a bad thing?
Hiring managers favour candidates who are well-rounded and ambitious.
Here at Camp Leaders, who you are as a person far outweighs your technical, hard skills. Those skills can come in time; you can learn that. But being able to display versatility, adaptability, courage, determination, resilience etc., says more than anything.
Travel is that thing that allows you to show all of the above and is something you should proudly explain to recruiters, not hide from it.
The benefits of travelling are wide-ranging, impacting you both personally and professionally.
It’s an incredible opportunity to expand your knowledge, build your skillset, and accumulate unique experiences that will help shape your approach. All the above answers why travelling is good for your CV.
It will benefit your career like little else, so be proud of your travels and own that time; you deserve it.
