Career Break Interview Preparation Guide

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A career break is simply dedicated time away from your job. It may be something that is planned for or something that is unforeseen. It can be from 1 month to 3 years. Anything shorter than a month really falls into the glorified vacation bucket.

There are a few things that make a career break unique, namely that you should have a career that you are breaking away from. This puts the typical career break age range from 27 to 57 years old. Younger and it might be considered a Gap Year and older it may be considered retirement.

When people add the element of globe trotting to their break, then it is career break travel. It may mean that you tick off a bucket list, travel around the world or simply go live as an expat in another country. Basically, it is about shaking up your normal routine in a big way with your passport in hand.

A few career break myths are as follows:
★ It is too expensive, you must be rich
★ A gap on my resume will ruin my career
★ It is not safe to travel abroad
★ I can not travel because I have a family

Career break myths are all there to rationalize your fear and result in keeping you cemented to the life you think you have to live.

You do not have to have a trust fund, it is possible to take a break if you do not have much money saved. And it is certainly possible to save money in order to take a career break no matter what your circumstances. In fact, it is never too early to start.
Some people plan and save for several years and you can also get travel costs from those who have come before you. A key place to start is to determine roughly how much you will need to travel around the world. You may realize that you may have to change some of your spending habits but if you really want the career break bad enough, you will find a way to start saving. It is about priorities.

A career break does not equal career suicide. In fact, it will even help your career. You will build skills you can put on your resume such as confidence, patience and smart risk-taking. And a break will allow you the time to reflect on where your career is to date, how it may have gotten off track and how to refocus on what it is you really want to do.

The reality is that we live in a society that focuses so heavily on the negative, so safety is a valid concern when traveling abroad for any length of time. But most places are only as dangerous as the situations you place yourself in. Like many places in the world, as long as you keep your wits about you and make smart, common sense decisions (keep an eye on your stuff, do not wander off down a dark alley alone or go to notoriously bad neighborhoods at night), you are likely going to be just as safe abroad as you are at home.

Career break benefits are numerous. Most importantly getting away is essential for effective thinking. Combine your career break with travel and reap even more benefits. Exposure to cultures that function differently from our own from language to social customs to public transport awakens the brain, alerting it to a much broader range of possibilities for being, living and creating. You will come back to the workforce with skills other peers will not have. And you will stand out in a positive way.

If you are merely intrigued with the idea of career break travels or are salivating to take one, there are a growing number of resources to help you plan and prepare for a career break. They come in many different forms with different levels of your commitment and involvement required.
★ Basic Training:
As an online travel course and community, Basic Training connects you with reliable resources, expert voices and like-minded peers - all of which will lead you to getting on a plane and taking a career break.
★ Travel and forums:
A chance to communicate in an active forum to ask one off questions and get up to date advice.
★ Meet, Plan, Go! Events:
If you are tired of digital, then come on out in person and meet career break travel experts.

Considering a career break can be overwhelming as fears and questions flood your head. You need some inspiration - well, we have it! We will discuss the circumstances that brought you to this point and examine ways that you can take advantage of channeling them into a career break. You can also find out the many benefits of taking a career break and be inspired by hearing other's stories of self-discovery, inner-growth and re-examining goals.

We can tell you without wavering that it is possible to travel with family. It is just that you may not personally know anyone who has taken a career break with their family and traveled the world. He took his family around the world Or the Cooney's who pulled their 3 sons out of high school for home school and an education of world travel or family on bikes who took the ultimate biking trip on the highway from one place to another with their 2 boys.

The obvious answer is to do what you always wanted to do and go see what you dreamed of seeing. Sometimes what you need is to grow your experiences and develop skills outside of the workforce. Career breakers volunteer, do cultural exchange, learn a language or new skill like sailing or teaching, but most importantly slow down and chill. Clear your mind, forget about the rat race and open up a side of you that you have probably never met before.
But if you need more ideas then stop by career break secrets who offer career break video guides. There will give you a real look at a region of the world and what you can do there from a career break perspective.

You should make the decision to leave and then go before anyone really has the chance to convince you it is a bad idea.

While we are at it, let us be more specific and twisted. That is, let us twist the usual year's resolution advice to make it more fitting, fun and hopeful.
If your life feels boxed in or you want to live outside the cube, take note and take heart.

Everyone is always preaching about saving for an education, house, rainy day or retirement. But retirement is such distant ship-smoke on the horizon.
Presently, 35% of people over 65 work. And both those numbers will keep growing as the cost of living ratchets up.
The best reward for saving money for your senior years. You hereby have permission to sneak some straw from your nest egg when you have one to practice retiring. Go away, far away, for a week or 13 or so. Then come back and work (and invest) some more.

Research shows that about 90% of the people who read online media do not actually participate in the conversation, consumption vs production. I understand, communicating online is not for everyone.
However a percentage of that 90% are not lurking because they want to but because they feel like they have to. They are staying in the closet because they can not yet let people know about their career break plans. They must stay in the closet in order to remain at their jobs and while they quietly plan their getaway.

Let's work to be truly valued so that we can demand a career break and get it. You can become more valuable by doing these things in your career:
★ Work smarter to make a big impact with your group.
★ Be positive, happy, and enjoyable to be around.
★ Do more research on a specialty problem and uncover the unknown.
★ Come up with an innovative idea to solve that problem or create another section of business.
★ Take charge, execute, and grow your new idea or business section, doing it with no instruction from your boss, just informing your boss of your actions along the way.
★ Realize you are now in demand and valued at your company.
★ Have the confidence to demand more from your work, and negotiate leave with the ability to be hired back.
★ You are in demand, be confident.

Do not hide your passions but work them into your life and job and take risks to do so. If you have the passion to quit your job and travel then you also have the passion to stand up to others plans/advice and be happy doing it. Your good at what you do, so be confident about negotiating leave.

Taking the step of quitting is something that seems pretty hard to do but it all depends on what we want to do in life. Like most change in life, the hardest part is within your own mind. Once I actually did it, I realized that I can achieve whatever I want to, I just had to go for it. If I can do it, you can do it, too.

The concept of a career break is still quite novel, most of us do not have very many people in our social groups who have ever taken one. Unfortunately, this often means that all of your excitement over the idea of leaving your job in favor of long-term travel may not engender the kind of enthusiasm you are hoping for amongst your friends/co-workers/family. Even if you are just looking for support rather than advice, you should expect to be assaulted with many, many reasons why it is a bad idea and you are crazy for even contemplating it.

A break is a career defining, not a career defeating. The word "break" often has a negative connotation. A break up, break down, break in, break the law, break a leg and the term 'career break' is no different. People think of it as a bad thing.
However, a growing body of evidence shows that taking regular breaks from mental tasks improves productivity and creativity.

Travel filled that void in the past when I would take my two-week vacations, but I was looking for something more. I wanted to brace yourself for the ultimate cliche to make a difference or maybe it was more selfish than that and I just wanted to smile at myself in the mirror again.

Start purging now. Closets first then paring back your living areas.
The nervous excitement I felt while arriving at my decision I put to good use. I began to clear out closets, I figured even if I could not make the break, I would have clean closets and if it did happen, I would have less to deal with as moving day drew near.
Downsizing our stuff is no small task when living in a society that encourages acquisition.

In my work life they have always been effective in aiding me in getting the job done. I prefer using a legal pad when I am making major lists. Each page has a topic and I begin by organizing the seemingly endless tasks onto those pages. Each item large and small get a neat little checkable box next to it. When the task is completed, I check it off at the end of the day I can see the progress I made (or didn't make).
For preparing my career break, I did a "data dump" almost daily and revised these lists often and gradually the to-do's began to shrink. As moving approached, these lists gave me a sense of control and helped keep me focused on my end goal of taking off on my solo journey.