Introduction
Do you love to travel? Do you especially like to travel overseas? Unless you’re rich, foreign travel can seem like an unattainably expensive dream. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Even if you have to work for a living, you can travel overseas. A search of the Internet yields dozens of international job portals and employment agencies that provide job search leads. You can also support yourself by creating your own job.
Valuable Skills
If you speak, read, write and understand English, you have a valuable skill that makes you marketable worldwide. Especially if you have training and certification as a tutor or instructor to teach English to non-native speakers, you can write your own ticket. Even if you don’t have formal training, you can find work as an English instructor.
Speaking a second language is another valuable skill. Any second language is a favorable skill to have, but depending on where you want to go, speaking Spanish, Chinese, French or Arabic are especially valuable. If you are absolutely fluent, you can seek work as a translator, but even if you only speak a second language passably well, it’s a bonus.
Use Your Network
You may have more leads to an overseas job than you think. Did you attend secondary school, college or university? Look up old friends and acquaintances to determine if any of them work in a country where you would like to live. Don’t ask them for work directly, but for insight on how they found their jobs.
If you ever studied or volunteered abroad, you have a valuable asset to include on a resume or CV. You also have potential contacts for possible overseas jobs. If you never studied or volunteered abroad, have you considered doing so? Especially for volunteer assignments, you may be provided with room and board as a substitute for monetary compensation, which can greatly reduce the cost of overseas travel.
Be Flexible
If being in a particular location is more important than the type of work you do, look into the possibility of seasonal work or service positions. You won’t make much money, but in many locations you will earn enough to keep a roof over your head and food on the table. If you’re a young adult under the age of 30, you may qualify for a work holiday visa or a position as an au pair.
Create Your Own Job
Research the work permit and visa laws for each country where you wish to travel. You may be lucky enough to skip the entire job search process and go to work for yourself. For instance, you may be able to market yourself as a language tutor. If you are a writer with online assignments and a laptop computer, you can work nearly anywhere in the world where you can find reliable Internet access.
Presenting Your Credentials
Depending on where you want to work, you may need to completely rethink the way you present yourself on paper or in an electronic document. Do your research to determine how employers expect job candidate to package their credentials. You may have to prepare more than one set of credentials, especially if you plan to travel to more than one country or to different regions of the world. For instance, in the United States, except for jobs in academia, one or two page resumes are standard. However, in many parts of the world, employers expect to see curriculum vitae, also known as a CV. A CV is often much more detailed than a resume, and may include details that never appear on American resumes, such as marital status, leisure activities and even a photograph of the job applicant.
For Further Reading
• How to Find a Job Abroad money.usnews.com/money/careers/articles/2010/11/22/how-to-find-a-job-abroad
• How To Find Work Overseas – 5 Tips To Get That Job Abroad
overseasdigest.com/five-Tips-To-Get-That-Job-Abroad.htm
• How to Work and Travel: Turner of Around the World in 80 Jobs
travelinksites.com/how-work-travel-turner-around-world-80-jobs/
• Jobs Abroad
jobs.goabroad.com/
• Want to Work Abroad? Learn Another Language – Or Five
transitionsabroad.com/publications/magazine/0411/want_to_work_abroad_learn_another_language.shtml
Christine Sullins wrote and contributed this guest post for Progressive Personnel. Christine is a freelance writer with extensive experience as a careers coach. She enjoys writing about how the internet has changed the way people find work. Her articles appear on various career blogs.