Episode 15 – How to have a CV enhancing gap year, with Susan Griffith

April 4, 2015 Podcast

Welcome to the 15th episode of the Graduate Job Podcast.

This week I speak with best-selling travel author and Gap Year expert Susan Griffith, as we cover the topic of how to have a CV enhancing gap year. Susan shares her decades of experience in how to work your way around the world, sharing how to plan and execute an amazing gap year or two. She provides great insight into beginning to plan the gap year, and the best ways to volunteer, teach English and work around the globe. If you’re looking for travel inspiration after your finals, or need excitement and a break from a job that’s not going anywhere, then this episode is for you.

You can download the podcast to your computer or listen to it here on the blog. Additionally, you can subscribe via Spotify, iTunes or Stitcher radio.

MORE SPECIFICALLY IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT:

  • Why you should take time out after university to travel and work abroad
  • Why a period of working abroad will enhance your CV
  • How to begin planning a gap year
  • The qualifications you need to teach English abroad
  • Top tips for finding work teaching English as a foreign language
  • Whether you should plan the trip yourself or go through a company
  • Why you should think about volunteering abroad
  • Great advice on the best way to learn a language

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

  • Check out the ‘How to Get a Graduate Job’ step-by-step online course at https://howtogetagraduatejob.com/
  • Don’t even think about applying for graduate jobs until you’ve read my free guide, ‘The 5 steps you must take before applying for graduate jobs’. Click here NOW. It will completely change the way you apply for jobs!
  • Would you like a free 30-minute video coaching call? Simply select a time that works here https://calendly.com/gradjob/ We can go over your CV, application, or anything that you are struggling with.
  • Assessment Day – One of the top providers of psychometric tests. Click HERE and support the show
  • Career Gym – Use code GJP to get 20% off all of their tests!
  • Job Test Prep – One of the top providers of psychometric tests. Click HERE and support the show
  • Work Your Way Around the World – Susan’s best-selling book

Transcript – Episode 15 – How to have a CV enhancing gap year, with Susan Griffith

James:   Welcome back everyone to the Graduate Job Podcast, with your host James Curran. The Graduate Job Podcast is your weekly home for all things related to helping you on your journey to finding that amazing job. Each week I bring together the best minds in the industry, speaking to leading authors, entrepreneurs, coaches and bloggers who bring decades of experience into a byte size weekly 30 minute show. Put simply, this is the show I wish I had a decade ago when I graduated.

This week I speak with best-selling travel author and Gap Year expert Susan Griffith, as we cover the topic of how to have a CV enhancing gap year. Susan shares her decades of experience in how to work your way around the world, sharing how to plan and execute an amazing gap year or two. She provides great insight into beginning to plan the gap year, and the best ways to volunteer, teach English and work around the globe. If you’re looking for travel inspiration after your finals, or need excitement and a break from a job that’s not going anywhere, then this episode is for you.

James:  Hello, and welcome to the Graduate Job Podcast. I’m excited today to be speaking to Susan Griffith.   If you’ve ever read any books on travelling or taking a gap year, you will know Susan. She is the best selling author of Work Your Way Around the World, Teaching English Abroad 2015, Gap Years for Grown Ups and Your Gap Year to name just a few.

Susan, a very warm welcome to the Graduate Job Podcast.

Susan:      Thank you, James. I’m happy to be here with you.

James: So, I’ve given our listeners a very brief introduction of your work, but before we jump into the topic of travel today, would you like to tell us a little bit more about yourself and how you became a best selling author.

Susan: I don’t know if it’s exactly, technically, best selling but anyway, I came from Canada some decades ago to this country and I, after university I got a job in publishing in a little publisher in Oxford who specializes in books about working abroad. So, I already had an interest in travelling all over the world but I wasn’t specifically interested in writing about working or volunteering, but that’s how it came about that I became sort of an expert over the years in those topics. So, I guess you can judge from my accent that I am working abroad myself and I’ve done for long, long time.




James: So, the Graduate Job Podcast covers all aspects of helping people to get the jobs of their dreams and a major part of that is proving to employers that you’re an interesting candidate who they should hire, with transferable skills and outside interests and having done something different to the many, many other candidates, and travel is a fantastic way to do this and it’s going to be the topic of today.

So, starting at the beginning, why should students and graduates think about taking a year out and going travelling and working?

Susan: Well, for many of them they have been thinking about this prospect throughout their course because they haven’t been able to get away. So, it’s a reward, really, for all the hard work that they’ve put in and they’re in desperate need of a kind of change of scene and a break. Others are not so, it’s not just the carrot, the reward that they’re after. They have the stick of not being able to get a job in this country. And so they’re forced, it’s almost necessary for them to look elsewhere. So, those are the two kinds of situations and they might think about things that grow out of the course that they’ve just graduated from. So, environmental studies or development studies or many, many courses they can find some sort of relevant position in a foreign country. It may not be paid. We’ll get onto that later, but anyway, or it might just be something completely different. They just want to go and work on an organic farm or something physical after all the sitting around in libraries. So there are many reasons.

James: Completely agree with the first one and I know it was one of the many things— It was one of the reasons got me through all the revision, was having light at the end of the tunnel, a year out at the end of finishing uni. The second point you made about going abroad to get the work and get the skills, it’s definitely something that I recommend to some of the people that I coach is instead of being in a nine to five possibly not the best job over here, is go abroad. Do something exciting and it will look more interesting on the CV than say, working in the call centre.

Susan:  That’s right; absolutely. Or even, you can sometimes do a kind of not very exciting job abroad and at least then you’re experiencing another culture, possibly learning another language. Even that is preferable. I just heard yesterday about a young graduate from Liverpool who’s working, or he’s been living in the Netherlands for the last couple of weeks looking for a job and he’s got one working for an online gambling company. It doesn’t sound that exciting but it’s better than sort of just sitting around at home feeling miserable and having that job, I think.

James:  Completely, and also it shows that if you’re looking at someone’s CV and it shows that they’ve worked abroad, it shows they’re proactive and go-getter and someone who has….

Susan: Have initiative, yeah.

James: Definitely; definitely.

So, is it cliché, Susan, that the world is a big place — and it is — I know when I was planning the first of my two years out, a year out before university it was a daunting prospect that I could go anywhere and do anything. It became a little bit too daunting, with too many options. How would you recommend that people narrow down the range of options that are available to them in terms of where they go?




Susan:  Yep. Well, I think the first step would be to just sort of sit down and clearly think about what you want to do or what you’re capable of doing and make a list of your ideal five places, five kinds of placement kinds of jobs. They may not be realistic but once you start investigating you’ll discover what, and what is possible and what isn’t possible. I think the internet is a terribly daunting place to start because you just go from one possibility to another. Lot’s of these organizations make them sound exciting and you just don’t know where to begin. So, I think I would say, start with a book which sort of structures the way you can think about it. So you might just think, oh, well, I don’t want to consider that whole category of expeditions or something because that’s not me and then just focus on the kinds of experience that you’re after, the kinds of work that you want to have. After you’ve done that, then you can go to the internet and tweak it, find out the nitty-gritty details of the kinds of things you want, but that would be one way of narrowing it down.

Many other external factors will narrow down your options. For instance, whether or not you can get a work visa for countries, is a huge factor and so I’m sure everyone out there is aware that you can work in Europe without any, in European union countries if you are an EU citizen yourself, without any difficulty but outside that you have to look quite carefully at what the requirements are. So, there are working holiday visas in countries like Australia and New Zealand and Canada which graduates can – you don’t have to be a graduate – but young people aged 18 to 30 are eligible to apply for and there are other schemes in other countries, but they’re all differ and they all have to be taken into consideration. So. If someone says, oh, I’d just love to go and get a job in Bhutan or Mongolia or Turkey, it might not be possible from the visa point of view. So that’s another way of limiting what you can do.

James: And also, I guess, cost is a limiting factor as well.

Susan: Yeah. It is, but that’s true. If you go to the Google rankings, the ones that go to the top are the sort of schemes and agencies that usually charge a great deal, even for voluntary placements. They’re adding a huge amount for making it easy for you and a lot of those are prohibitively expensive but then there are other schemes and other ways of doing it independently where the outlay would be much, much less. Of course, if you go to a nearer country that you can get on a mega bus, that’s going to be a lot cheaper than if you go to some very remote country or a long, long way away like New Zealand.




James: So, starting with teaching which is something close to my heart because after university I spent a year teaching English in China–

Susan:   Very good. Yeah.

James:  –which was an amazing opportunity. And also as a graduate it’s, you do get to see lots of companies who come around on the Milkround offering the teaching schemes, the Jet scheme to Japan which is well publicized, and some others.

Firstly, if people wanted to go teaching, what eligibility criteria are there? Is it enough to have a degree, or are there any other qualifications which you’ll need?

Susan: Well, it differs, of course. So that jet scheme which you referred to which is an excellent scheme sponsored by the Japanese government to put graduates into, mostly into state schools as sort of assistant teachers helping the local language teachers, that’s a very good scheme but on the whole they’re not, they don’t care if you have teaching English as a foreign language qualification on top of your graduate degree or your university degree. They’re mainly looking for the right kind of personality which they try to ascertain in an interview. It’s a very competitive scheme and of course, if you did have qualification in TEFL, as it’s called, then that could help but it isn’t necessary. That’s unusual. In most cases, in language schools and institutes and governments around the world want their teachers to have some sort of training and so they should, because it’s one thing to speak a language and quite another to teach it and almost all the young people who have gone abroad to teach English without much training have regretted that, have thought, oh, they’re taking the money from these eager language learners and they feel that they’ve let them down because they don’t really know how to go about it. They don’t know where to begin.

So, the standard qualification that most people do and it’s not something that they are maybe going to do for life, but it’s a very good qualification and it teaches you a good skill and it’s a four week certificate in teaching English as a foreign language, and that’s offered by University of Cambridge, and many, many places around the world, the CELTA is the acronym or Trinity in London also offers a 4 week course called the Trinity TESOL Certificate and it is very similar and is a very good grounding in how to teach English.   There are many others. People do sort of summer courses at university and things, but those are universally recognized and seem to be the preferred qualification that people have and that certificate opens many doors, from Argentina to Taiwan.

James:  One of my friends did the qualification and he said it was – he did it after his degree — and he said the one month course was one of the most difficult things he’d done.

Susan:   That’s right.

James: He said it was very, very challenging. As you said, he passed and he taught in places from Saudi Arabia to Morocco and he’s now in Indonesia. As you said it’s universally recognized and it just opens doors for you.

Susan: That’s right. I mean, obviously a qualification obtained after just one month is not going to get you into the plum jobs of teaching in universities or anything like that. But it certainly gets you onto the first rung of the ladder and then it will take some years of experience before you are a really good English language teacher and after getting that experience, then you can think about moving into more elite schools. But anyway, the first step would be this qualification and I’ve interviewed many young people who have got out of university, looked around at the prospects in Britain for jobs and thought, nope, and they’ve done that four week course. It just about killed them because it’s just totally full on and as you say, very, very challenging. No one has said it didn’t teach them the skills they were looking for. I mean, it really is effective and then they have gone off to— I know one right now in Barcelona. Last year he was in Chile teaching for the Chilean Navy. He was sort of living a kind of hippy life in a co-op house and then he would go in and teach these military types who were very disciplined. So, that was quite amusing. Anyway, many, many graduates find that they can quite easily get a job in a language institute, really, in any — not any country — but so many countries after they’ve done this course.

James: And you talked about the different types of jobs and the plum jobs. What are the best ways for people to try and find a teaching job when they have that qualification?

Susan: Well, if they’re just starting out they shouldn’t, if it’s their first job they shouldn’t really expect to be picked up by The British Counsel or some prestigious place. It just differs from country to country. For instance, in Spain where there are many jobs available, there are job fairs, one every May, where quite good schools go and interview candidates. So, it would be certainly worth getting a no frills flight to Seville for that. That’s one way. But most people, of course, just look for ads on the internet, good sites like TEFL.com. They post job ads all the time at all levels. Sometimes just for unqualified teachers wanting to teach English at summer schools and other times for much more higher level jobs.   Some of these teaching English websites invite you to post your own CV and some people have found that that is not so productive because they get their inboxes absolutely jammed full of many, many invitations from Korea and they can’t keep them straight. So, it’s better to be a little bit selective about where you post your CV and perhaps you be the one that chases the jobs that appeal to you rather than they other way around.




James: Good advice. Would you recommend people getting a job before they go or just turning up in a country and trying to get one on the ground?

Susan: Well, it depends the circumstances that you’re in. There’s nothing wrong with getting—- Nowadays people can be interviewed by Skype so easily. So, it is very possible to get a job before you go that way and then often its the kind of job where if it doesn’t suit you, you could leave after a couple of months. So, it really doesn’t commit you to anything. However, if you know what country you want to go to and you’re determined to go there anyway, of course it’s better if you can meet face to face the prospective employers, talk to teachers who will know which are the exploitative employers and which are the good ones. You can find some of that out by looking at online forums and all that but to be on the spot is probably preferable. But, on the other hand, then you’d have to sort of keep yourself, you’d have to pay your living expenses until you found a job. You’d have to do the work and find out what time of year is the right time to go.   You wouldn’t want to show up in Spain in March looking for a job because their teachers are normally hired in September for an October start. And then the timetable is completely different in South America where jobs would start in February, March after the southern hemisphere summer.   Anyway, there’s no set rule about that. Some people are too nervous to just go off and look for a job on the spot and others swear by that and say that it’s silly to commit yourself to something, to a school that you haven’t seen. But as long as you do enough research it should be fairly, fairly okay.

James:  That’s true. I went out to China through a company. They placed you in a school. I was lucky and got placed in a nice university in a small town and it was, I had a brilliant time. Other people got placed in places really in the middle of nowhere and where they didn’t want to be. They asked for a big city and they got some tiny town in the middle of nowhere.

Susan: Yep. That’s the disadvantage of going through a big agency is that you have very little control over— and that’s true of Jet, you can be put in the countryside with that too but then the wages are very good there so you might put up with it. Anyways, as an entry level job, I think people should be realistic that they just can’t have their dream job from the word go and that you work up to that by taking what you can get in the first instance which may not be in the city you would choose or in the school that is offering the best quality of education but once you’re there, once you’re on the spot, then you can suss out the scene and move strategically after that. That’s just a reminder to people to be realistic about what they can do as a newly qualified English teacher.

James:  That’s true. And also, it doesn’t really matter where you get placed. You make the most of every situation and sometimes where you think originally might not be the best place, you probably have the time of your life once you get into it.

Susan: It could be but then some do go wrong. I mean, some people go to— Well, not so much now. They used to be many complaints coming out of language schools in Korea where the promised wages weren’t paid or bonuses weren’t paid, lots of dodgy practices and what some idealistic young graduates found most distressing was that these language mills really just want to get the money from the paying customer and they really just don’t care about the quality of education. So, you know, a teacher wants to see students improve and even the ones that weren’t improving are passed to the next level automatically just because if they don’t, they won’t continue with that school. They are not all lovely ideal jobs that you can get initially but it is all teaching you how to negotiate the field. So, it’s all worthwhile, as you say.

James: True. Especially for the questions you get on online application forms for graduate schemes which ask around difficult situations you’ve had–

Susan: Yes.

James: –or when you’ve faced a challenge.

Susan: That’s exactly right. You can spin all of these experiences, even the negative ones later to be kind of character building, teaching you to think on your feet, defend your rights, all these things can be really useful life skills.

James:   Definitely. And if you were to have the same example and you swapped— I taught in a school in Barnsley and then I taught in a school in Korea. People will be more interested about the time you taught in Korea than—-

Susan:   That’s right.

James:  We touched there upon how companies will organize these trips for you. What other pros and cons are there apart from the fact you probably don’t get the choice of where you’re going to be placed?

Susan: Well, especially at the younger age range where people in their gap year after school, there are many, many companies that charge high fees to organize placements for them and mostly, often it’s the parents that are paying because they want the safety of a company that will pick up the pieces if things go wrong. Of course, that’s no guarantee but once you’re sort of out of university it’s arguable that you don’t really need necessarily one of those cossetting organizations that will just arrange the insurance for you. It’s just like going through a travel agent, which of course, they have great mark-ups because they are providing a service whereas if you are capable of organizing a lot of these things on your own, then you don’t need that and you can save money that way, but it just depends on the individual. Some who have never travelled before would benefit from having this cushion, and others who are experienced travellers would scorn it.   So, there’s no general rule but certainly many people have just arranged something by themselves, been in touch with grassroots, voluntary organizations, or volunteered to work as a sort of intern for a company abroad and without paying the massive fees to the middle man. So, it certainly is possible for those with enterprise and initiative.

James: Definitely. And the beauty of the Internet now is that you can reach out and speak to these people, you can find out their feedback and what they think certain institutions and schools are like, very easily.

Susan:  But I don’t want to make it sound like companies that organize things for you are always a waste of time because that isn’t true. There are several internship companies working in China, for instance, which is a country that might be quite difficult to fix that up by yourself and some of these programs are integrated. So, they might include some language tuition; they might fix up accommodations even with a family which can be very useful if you’re trying to learn a language; as well as the placement as an intern and they will charge for that. But then, so they should. I mean, that’s how it works. One I just heard about, they cooperate with the British Counsel which offers some sort of bursaries to help people get onto these schemes. So, there might be ways around the funding of it, if you investigate carefully enough.

James:  So when I went to China I went through a company, and I think the cost was £5-600 pounds, but at the time I was going for my final exams and then I went to China maybe two months after finishing.

Susan:  So, you wouldn’t have time to do it yourself, anyway.

James: Yeah. Exactly and I didn’t want— You’re going through your finals. You don’t really want the stress or hassle of having to sort this out.     So I thought it was–

Susan:   –money worth paying.

James: It was worth it, yeah.

Susan: Good.

James: So moving onto working. So. you mentioned the working visas that Brits can get in Australia. Is it still the case? Is it fairly easy to get a work visa for Australia and New Zealand and Canada?

Susan: Yeah, it is. It is.   Well, of course, you have to jump through their hoops but they’re not that difficult to qualify as long as you’re in the right age group which is under 30, to go to Australia and New Zealand. New Zealand is almost two years, a 23 month visa. So, that’s very good. Australia you can go for a year but if you agree to work for three months in the boondocks, working in the fruit industry, fruit picking in the country or something like that, then you can extend for another year. This is fairly straight forward.

Canada is also like that but it’s so oversubscribed that it’s very difficult just to get the application in on the day they’re released. It’s a bit like getting tickets for Glastonbury or something. I just noticed that on March 12th, which was just now, last week, they released their first tranche of visas and they were gone within 12 minutes. So, you have to really be on the ball for that one. There will be another release, possibly in about a week. They don’t even tell you the date. Although it’s easy enough to qualify in that case, it’s quite difficult to get one just because of the sheer numbers of people applying. And then a lot of people, of course, are interested in the United States and the great old organization BUNAC is still going and still helping graduates – not necessarily graduates – getting working visas for the summer for the USA. So, it makes that easier.




James:  And BUNAC, can you only do it whilst you’re at university, or are you able to do it following university?

Susan: I haven’t looked at this for a while. I think there are different schemes. For one you do have, I think that you can be in your year after graduation but not after that for some. But then one of the schemes for working on summer camps is not confined to students, as I recall. I haven’t looked at this for a while. So, I may not have that quite right. But anyways, there are some opportunities for non students but there would certainly be an age limit.

James: I’ve had friends who’ve done BUNAC and spoke of it really, really highly. The opportunity to go to the States it’s very difficult as you get older. So, take the opportunity whilst you can.

Susan: That’s right, it is. I mean, there are other visas people apply for. There’s the H visa which can be seasonal work but it’s circumscribed by many qualifications. So, that people used to get that visa to work in the ski resorts of Colorado where there was a definite shortage of workers but recent changes in the immigration regulations make that more difficult. But it isn’t the only route, but it’s certainly the easiest if you qualify as a young, as a student and are eligible.

James: About 30% of our listeners come from Australia, Canada, New Zealand. Is it still easy for them to come to the UK to work?

Susan: Yeah. It’s the same. Same. It used to be that Britain allowed far more nationalities to come on a working holiday visa than they do now. I think it was 2008 they changed it to something called a Youth Mobility Visa and that’s only available to, I think, six or seven nationalities but including Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, Japanese and a couple of others. Same idea, yes. They can qualify for that without too much trouble.   You often have to have a certain amount of money in the bank and you have to show you have no criminal record and basic things like that, but mostly you don’t have to have a job fixed up ahead of time. You can just enter with your visa and look for a job.

James: And moving on now to volunteering which I know is a very popular area. When I went travelling before university, it was something I wanted to do, to go volunteering and I was shocked at the costs associated with volunteering. Is it always something which is going to cost you money to do?

Susan: Almost always it is. Certainly anything fixed up from home will almost always be. And if you think about it, what are you offering to them? Often you, in disaster relief, you can’t do very much. You might be able to move bricks to build a house but that, lots and lots of locals can do that too.   So, why should they pay you or even give you free room and board for that. You the volunteer are paying for the opportunity to help which does come as a shock to some people but that really is the way it is. Some programs are far more expensive because maybe they’re more glamorous than others. So, say you wanted to do some reef monitoring in Madagascar.

James: Sounds good.

Susan: And that could look very good on your CV if you had done a degree in environmental studies and wanted to go on in that field but you will have to pay to join in that. You will have to pay obviously to learn how to scuba dive or something, and then after that you would pay. And there are just thousands of different organizations charging different amounts and some are offering really classy accommodations and Rolls-Royce insurance policies, and others are more by the seat of their pants organizations. So, it just depends what would suit you. Some people do arrange — when they’re in a local place — they can arrange some volunteering which they would not be charged for and they might even be given simple accommodations. And I’m thinking of one young women after university went to Guatemala and was staying on Lake Atitlan and she was staying in a hostel and exchanging some of her— she worked in the hostel so she got free accommodation. So she wasn’t spending anything, but she had lots of free time so she attached herself to a little local charity and taught kids in the school and of course, she didn’t have to pay for that because that’s just arranged on the spot.

James:  And you have to remember that a lot of these people who organize these trips, they are companies trying to make money.

Susan: They are. That’s right, and some people in the industry object to that, that young people are being exploited and sort of duped into paying more than they need to but anyway, that’s one point of view only.

James: With the volunteering, again, how would you recommend people narrowing down their options of where they wanted to go and what they wanted to do?

Susan:  Well, I think the same as I said before. If you’ve always wanted to go to India, then look at what there is in India and don’t look at what there is Nicaragua. If you like working with kids, then you might think about working in different schools. And if you don’t like that, you’re interested in engineering, you might think about something that does building or whatever. Anyway, there are many different categories of tasks that a volunteer can do and graduates tend to have their eye on a certain strand which might help their CV in future years so that if you were thinking of going into something in the social work field, then you could — I don’t know — AIDS education in Africa or something. There would be many tie-ins with possible future careers.

James: Definitely and I think it’s really valuable to have in the back of your mind the long thought about what is the ultimate aim you want to get from this experience. What skills do you want to be bringing back? What’s going to look good on your CV, ultimately.

Susan: Yeah, I agree.

James: In terms then of language, lots of people want to, with their time that they’ve got off want to go abroad and learn a language. What are the best ways that students can learn a language abroad within that specific amount of time?

Susan: Well, everybody learns languages at different rates. So, you can’t really generalize but I mean, it’s quite good to have a little bit of a grounding before you go, instead of just being a rank beginner. So if you know that you want to learn some Spanish and didn’t do it at A-Level or anything, then you can, obviously, do an evening course before you set off just to get you past the initial basic grammar. But once you’re on the spot – it’s a cliché – but of course it’s much easier to learn a language if you’re immersed in it. So, a combination of doing structured classes in your destination country as well as staying away from all the people who speak English. Maybe make yourself do something where you’re in a situation where no one speaks English.

I know someone who is in Bolivia just now and she joined a gym in her city, just a local gym and the instructions are limited because, you know, they’re not talking about the state of the world. They’re just being told to move in a certain way. Anyway, she says her Spanish has improved enormously since she did that but other people take, pay for hours and hours of structured lessons and that often is very good but that can be a little expensive.

One way is to organize just a one to one lessons — conversation if you’re a little bit more advanced — with somebody and maybe you won’t have to pay them if you do the same for them in English. So, it’s like a language swap. And there are in Spain — I’ve heard in Turkey — I heard of this, sort of, “intercambio” where there might be Tuesday nights, everybody meets at such and such a pub and all the local people who are trying to improve their English will expect to meet native speakers there. It’s all very informal, just to chat and that would be an excellent place to meet someone who might be prepared to help you improve on your Spanish, or whatever it is.

James: That’s brilliant advice. I know the friends I went to China with, we all went out with grandiose ideas about learning Mandarin. We were there for a year. We’re there for a year. We’re going to learn a load of Mandarin. And the problem was, of course, that we spent all our time with other expats. There was Germans working there in manufacturing. There was Australians, Canadians, Americans. So, you just used to, it’s easier, you hang around with all the other English speakers and then you realize that by the end of the year you know a handful of words that you all learned in the first month and then you didn’t really learn much after that.

Susan: I know. That’s how it often is and of course then in some countries, even if you’re not with all the expats you’ll find that the native people speak English far more readily than you can speak their language. So everybody, the default is always English and it’s great for communication but not so good for language learning.

James:  That’s true. And also you mentioned the one to one language exchange, I did that before I went up and the problem I found was that the person I was doing it with, their English was a lot better than my Chinese was. So you tend to just speak in English more than you speak in Chinese.

Susan: There you go. There are disadvantages of speaking this language that is the dominant language of the world right now.

James: Yep. Not many, but there’s a few. And I agree, if you’re going to do it you need to really immerse yourself, go to somewhere in the middle of nowhere where you can really concentrate in learning the language. Stay with a family. Really make an effort not to be speaking English and hang around with English people.

Susan: I’ve heard of a new kind of language course which take place on the street. So instead of being in the classroom, you would go out in a small group with a teacher and say, go to the market and actually carry out day to day transactions in the target language and that has the advantage of being more memorable and real than just out of a textbook. So, that might be something to look out for.

James: That does sound good. That sounds really good.

Okay, Susan. Well, time is unfortunately running away with us. So before we finish, let’s just ask, go to the quick fire round. So, first question; what one book would you recommend our listeners to read?

Susan: Well, you’re expecting me to recommend one of my books but I’m too modest to do that.   Oh, I don’t know. I love so much travel writing but one that I read quite recently which I really enjoyed was published by Bradt Publications, which is a guidebook publisher and they’ve collected together all sorts of tales from their writers of when things went wrong. It’s called the The Irresponsible Traveller: Tales of scrapes and narrow escapes. Some of them are so hairy and entertaining. It’s very nice to read them in armchair, rather than experience them.

James: That sounds good. Probably not one to give your parents just before you go away in a year abroad.

Susan: No.  Exactly.

James: Even though Susan is too modest to recommend her books, I recommend her books and before you go away, before you start planning and going away, make them a first port of call. They will answer a lot of the questions that you have and inspire you to go to amazing places and do amazing things.

Next question, one website you would recommend?

Susan:  Well, there’s one I contribute to which is like a travel magazine, an online travel magazine which is very good writing, I think, called perceptivetravel.com but for more practical things with links to so many organizations in the world of international travel and educational resources, there’s one called goabroad.com where you can go to the section on internships, volunteering jobs. That’s a very useful one too; goabroad.com

James: Sounds perfect. And I will link to that in the show notes. So listeners, check out the show notes at graduatejobpodcast.com and you’ll find all the links to everything that we’ve discussed today.

And finally, Susan, what one tip would you give listeners that they can implement today in their job hunt.

Susan: Well, maybe I’ll put my modesty aside and say that you should go to the library or a book shop and have a look at one of the books which will, as you say, try to inspire you but also provide realistic parameters to what you can consider. If you’re interested in teaching, my book Teaching English Abroad has country by country sections and all information about training and all the background stuff. Or, if you’re just thinking of winging it around the world, get my book Work Your Way Around the World
today.

James: Susan, thank you for your time today. Before we finish, how can people get in touch with you and your books and your work?

Susan: The books are in bookshops and libraries, as I say. Or they’re published by Crimson Publishing, which you can Google and order them from the website or of course, through Amazon – and all those other kinds of bookshops – and I’m always looking for stories from people who have worked abroad teaching or whatever it is, to put in my future editions of books. So, I’m happy to have people contact me. They can find my email address on the publisher’s website.

James: Excellent Susan and I’ll link to everything you’ve mentioned in the show notes, as I mentioned.

Susan: Very good. Thank you.

James: Thank you so much for your time today, it is much appreciated.

Susan: Been a pleasure.

James: My thanks again to Susan Griffith for her time and insight. I hope today’s episode has given you wanderlust to pack your bags and explore the world. My takeaways from today to carry with you. The first is to think explicitly about travel and working abroad in terms of the benefits it can your CV, and job applications overall. The benefits a focussed gap year will bring you both personally and professionally are huge. Companies are global in scope and increasingly want candidates who also have experience globally. Second languages are a must for many firms so get out there and immerse yourself in a culture while you do it. Answering detailed 200 word application questions about difficult situations you’ve faced, your public speaking competencies, how you relate to people from different cultures, all these you’ll be able to tick off without a problem and with interesting examples that will make interviewers want to listen if you start talking about foreign locations where you did them. Have a cold hard honest look at the experiences on your CV, is it currently getting you the results you want? If not, think about what a stint abroad teaching, working or volunteering might add to it.

Second takeaway is that, if you are a native English speaker and I’m guessing that is the majority of the people listening, then you have been blessed through the fluke of birth to have been born speaking a language that billions of people around the world want to learn and speak. Utilise that brilliant opportunity, and go and teach somewhere exciting around the globe. After university is the perfect time to go, The Jet scheme in Japan will pay you nearly £20,000 for the year, schools and universities in China will bite your hand off. Pick a country that you’ve always wanted to visit and go, spend 6 months teaching there. You will see and experience a side of the country you will never see if you’re just backpacking around getting trollied in hostels. You will learn a phenomenal amount about yourself, you will grow, be challenged, and develop skills you didn’t know you had.

Finally, just a plea really to go. Go now while you have the chance, everyone I know who did had the time of their life, and most people who didn’t regretted it. Once you start working its too easy to get sucked into the grey zone of comfort and mediocrity in a job you don’t really want. Remember, the only adventure you regret is the one you didn’t take.

Right episode 15 on travel and work abroad all sorted. You can find a full transcript of everything that we’ve talked about and all links at www.graduatejobpodcast.com/gapyear. Please get in touch with us on Twitter @gradjobpodcast, and also if you’ve enjoyed the show please leave a review on Itunes or Stitcher radio, it’s the best way other than sharing us with your friends to show appreciation for the podcast. If you’ve not already subscribed via Itunes or Stitcher radio, you need to sort that out, it’s the easiest way to get each episode delivered to you for free and to make sure that you don’t miss a thing. Join us next week when we speak to author John Lees as we cover the topic of how to get a job you love. I hope you enjoyed the episode today, but more importantly I hope you use it and apply it. See you next week.

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