Taking time out – is it career suicide?
Posted: July 8, 2011 Filed under: Careers advice, Time out, Voluntary work Leave a comment »
Time out could lead somewhere in the long term.
I met a recruitment director from a high street bank recently and he had spent the first two years after university doing voluntary community work. He wasn’t all that old either, so clearly the fact that he had not gone straight into ‘serious’ employment after graduation didn’t arrest his upward career trajectory. In his view, it actually helped because by the time he was ready to commit to working in the commercial world, he was more focused on what he wanted and more eager to get there quickly.
I mention this because, at this time of the year, there will be many recent graduates contemplating a bit of ‘time out’ either as a response to not getting a job or because they are knackered after several years of unbroken study. Now it’s entirely up to you what you do with your life but I just wanted to say that, whatever your motive, if you did want to do something different for a year or two, something that may be related or unrelated to the career that you want to pursue, then it won’t necessarily hold you back.
The key issue, according to my high-flying recruitment director from a high street bank (and he should know), is that whatever you do, wherever you go, it all should have some sort of ‘explainability’ built in. This means that when you find it’s the right time to apply for the job that you want to do, you can clearly explain the huge benefits to you as a person and a potential employee arising from the experience. In all his many recruitment interviews, he says that he never holds a period of time out against the applicant – as long as it was genuinely useful and can be explained as such.
Volunteering overseas on a shoestring
Posted: January 28, 2011 Filed under: Time out, Voluntary work, Work experience Leave a comment »
As the academic year approaches its half-way point, final year students will be thinking about life after college; for many this will involve some overseas travel. Voluntary work overseas has long been popular with gap year students and graduates keen to immerse themselves in and support other cultures. Not surprisingly it is big business for travel companies.
Gap year organisations offer virtually every kind of voluntary experience you can imagine – from teaching, conservation or adventure trips, to work experience, community and care projects. Many people find it reassuring to book placements and programmes through large companies that can offer 24-hour support to the young traveller, but many others are put off by the big price tags that often accompany such projects.
If you are keen to do some voluntary work as part of a gap-year trip but balk at the costs, then don’t despair – for confident and sensible would-be-volunteers then there are plenty of opportunities that won’t break the bank. If you shop around (don’t just sign up with the first organisation you come across on the internet) you can find huge variations in price for all manner of volunteer activities. Websites such as Volunteer South America list free or low-cost volunteer opportunities for independent travellers in Central and South America that bypass agency fees completely (True Travellers Society and IndependentVolunteer.org offer the same for those looking to volunteer in other regions, including Asia or Africa).
And if you are happy to organise things as you go along, then this is by far the cheapest way to do it; by waiting until you are already in the country you’d like to volunteer in before officially signing up to a project, then you immediately cut out a great deal of the cost. Some institutions, such as NUI Galway, offer advice on selecting voluntary placements, both at home and overseas, via their own dedicated websites, which can be a great way to start your research.
