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Hi,

After listening to the resume podcasts I am in the process of updating my cv and was just wondering how a working holiday would fit into the format.

I took a career break a few years ago and spent 1 year in Australia on a working holiday visa. The positions I held were all related to the finance field that I work in normally and my question is should I :

• list all of the positions that I had with a narrative and achievement bullets
or

• Put the dates that I was out of the country stating that I was working while travelling and then in the narrative mention the companies that I worked for and the positions that I held?

Thanks,

AManagerTool's picture

Sounds to me as if you were working. Why call it a holiday? How about a sabbatical to pursue....whatever it was you were pursuing? That seems to mean more of an attempt at achieving some personal goals than a vacation and it actually sounds like what you were doing.

[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabbatical[/url]

Ross_b1's picture

Thanks for your reply.

In my experience sabbaticals aren’t that common in the UK and I completely forgot about them.

My main concern was how it would look on my cv when my previous time spent in work had been 7 and 5 years. Then in the space of 1 year I had 4 positions ranging between 2 & 3 months; but this is a perfect solution.

HMac's picture

Yeah Ross- just figure out your "heading" for the period, then a sentence of two explaining what you did professionally. Then 3-4 bullets with specific accomplishments.

And to echo Tool: when you're interviewing, don't use the term "holiday" - explain it as a bit of an intensive period for accomplishing some specific professional objectives, and underscore your accomplishments by talking a little bit about what you learned (new industries, new applications of existing knowledge, new skills, etc).

If you just set this up so it gets off on the right foot, you can make it into a very interesting and powerful story...

-Hugh

US41's picture

People worry too much about explaining time off. I don't care if someone took some time off to raise small children, went on walk-about, or took a year off to ride around in a Winnebago. Just put your employment on your resume, and then be prepared to tell me that you took some time for yourself. Say it with confidence as if I should be jealous. I will be envious when I hear about it, and I will ask what happened and what you saw. Your interview may swing from an interrogation to a friendly conversation. We might hit it off. You might be hired because "I just like him."

Time off is not a negative. It's sanity.