Working Your Way Around the World

For many, deciding to get up and go is the biggest stumbling block—often the hardest step is fixing a departure date. Once you have bought a ticket, explained to your friends and family that you are off to see the world (they will either be envious or disapproving) and packed away your possessions, the rest seems to look after itself.

Inevitably, first-time travellers suffer some separation anxieties as they consider leaving behind the comfortable routines of home. But missing home is usually much worse in anticipation than it is when you are actually away. As long as you have enough motivation, together with some money, you are all set to have a great time abroad.

Either you follow your first urge and opt for an immediate change of scenery, or you plan a job and a route in advance. However they approach it, not everyone does it for the same reasons. On the one hand, some people use working as a means to an end—they work in order to fund further travelling. Other people look upon a job abroad as an end in itself, a way to explore other cultures, a means of satisfying their curiosity about whether there is any truth in the clichés about other nationalities.

When you are wondering whether you are the right sort to work abroad, do not imagine you are a special case. It is not only students or school-leavers who enjoy the chance to travel and work abroad. I have heard of a diplomat who enjoyed washing dishes in a restaurant and a physiotherapist who packed fish—there are countless other similar examples. All these people were motivated not by a desire to earn money but by a longing for new and different experiences, and a conviction that not all the events of one's life need to be connected with careers or success. For many, a job abroad is the best way to shake off the boredom that comes with routine.

It is not the lazy optimists of this world who succeed in getting jobs. If you go abroad and "wait for something to come up", you will soon find yourself penniless, with no prospects of adding to your travel funds. If you wait in idleness at home or if you sit in your hotel abroad all day, worrying about your decreasing funds or hesitating because you are convinced the situation is hopeless, or that you lack the necessary documents to work, you will get absolutely nowhere.

Every successful venture combines periodic dreaming with methodical planning. The majority of us lack the courage (or the foolishness) just to get up and go. Any homework you do ahead of time will benefit you later, if only because it will give you more confidence. As one disappointed traveller reported after a frustrating job search, "I would never again go abroad specifically to look for work without thoroughly researching the enterprise." But it is important to strike a good balance between strictly following a prearranged timetable which might stop you from grasping opportunities as they arise, and setting off with no idea what you're looking for.

For many people, a shortage of money is the main obstacle. It is the rare individual who specializes in "risky arrivals", with hardly any money. Other people wait until they have substantial savings before they dare leave home, which gives them the enviable freedom to work only when they want to. Sometimes lack of money pushes people into action. One traveler reported that he had been avoiding jobs he didn't fancy until he realized he was down to his last 100 francs, whereupon he decided to stop being so fussy about the kind of work he was prepared to do. The next day, he found a job.