Let your mind wander while strolling on the beach, discover new cultures and countries, just let yourself drift – that is a vacation. It lets us breathe deeply and gives us a breather from stressful everyday life.
And vacation forms
Because if properly planned, holidays can even advance us professionally. Would you like to change your career, but do not yet know your goals exactly and are not sure what you want to achieve? Taking a vacation will help you make new plans. Without the daily demands of your job, you will be better able to find out which goals you want to achieve and how you will succeed. To do this, choose a vacation spot where you can really relax and where you can let your thoughts run free.
A quiet destination by the sea or in the mountains will help you switch off. A journey in which you push your personal limits and leave your comfort zone makes you more courageous for changes. You learn to deal with challenges and demonstrate your organizational skills. These qualifications are also essential for your personal success in your job. And even if you cannot list these skills in an application solely based on your vacation experience, you benefit from them in everyday professional life. Very important: Leave your cell phone at home and give yourself time to think and reorient yourself. This break away from your desk is particularly important and helpful when you are planned to change jobs.
Improve language skills at the same time
A break is also helpful if you want to improve your language skills. Therefore, seek contact with the locals during your vacation. Small talk with the cashier in the supermarket, ordering the bill in English, French, or Spanish, and switching on local TV channels or reading the local newspaper will make you safer and bring your language skills into shape. If you would like to promote this even more specifically, book a language course in your holiday destination. This has the advantage that you will even receive a certificate at the end, which you can include in your application documents. Greek serenity, Italian joie de vivre à la Dolce Vita: watch how others do it during your vacation. Even if you certainly cannot do everything for yourself and your everyday work, it helps to think outside the box and to reflect on why you let yourself be stressed by certain situations and how people deal with this pressure in other countries. At the same time, you develop an understanding of the behavior of others in this way. This knowledge is often helpful, especially when you work with people from different cultures and countries.
Use vacation on your resume
Even if you have gained a lot of interesting experiences and exciting impressions while on vacation, a pure vacation trip does not belong in the application. The situation is different if you have headed for travel destinations that are related to the position you are aiming for. For example, if you would like to gain a foothold in child and youth work and have visited relevant institutions abroad during your vacation, this information is certainly useful. A mention of the trip on your résumé under the point “international experience” also makes sense if you have traveled over several months and intercultural skills are explicitly required in your position. But even then it is important to weigh up. If you have taken a guided tour through Germany’s neighboring countries, during which you primarily had contact with your fellow travelers, it certainly makes little sense to mention it on your CV. However, if you apply to a company that has offices in India and you have recently spent an extended period in the country, touring it on your own and making new contacts, you can certainly score with it. And it doesn’t matter whether you can pimp your résumé with the trip or whether the experience ultimately only serves you personally: A vacation is also possible if you are open and open to your travel destination and its people.