With August winding down and your latest vacation just a lovely memory, maybe you’re not ready to unpack your suitcase yet—or maybe you yearn to be one of those people who’s always posting breathtaking Instagram photos from places like Bali. But is it possible to make a living while indulging your wanderlust?
Happily, it is. Indeed.com recently culled employers’ postings and came up with a list of jobs for people who like to travel. Granted, they’re not for everybody. Some, like airline pilot or nurse on a cruise ship, require rigorous training, while a few others—like senior consultant (remember George Clooney in Up in the Air?)—call for specialized experience or even, ideally, a graduate degree.
If you’d like to travel the world or live abroad for just one to six months at a time, that’s possible, too. Overseas teachers of English as a second language (ESL), for instance, usually sign 3- to 6-month contracts that specify an hourly rate of pay. Ditto for DJs on cruise ships.
Here’s a sampling from Indeed’s list, with average salary or hourly pay:
- Senior consultant: $92,113
- Cruise bartender: $63,091
- Airline pilot: $68,491
- Retail buyer: $55,000
- Yacht captain: $50,620
- Trade show/event manager: $48,151
- Recruiter: $47,252
- Travel agent: $38,000
- ESL teacher: $21.40/hour
- Cruise DJ: $15.50/hour
“Travel time in these jobs ranges from very high (senior consultants travel up to 80% of the time) to relatively low (retail buyers travel at least 10%),” notes Indeed’s report. “Travel agents and recruiters land somewhere in the middle,” at about 40% and 50% respectively. Of course, some jobs in these fields have more glamor potential than others. Travel agents might get to try out exotic resorts and other vacation meccas, for instance, while senior consultants can wind up spending lots of their time in, say, Akron.
What if you put in a few years as, for instance, a yacht captain—which, by the way, takes a license from the U.S. Coast Guard—and then decide you want to go back to working in one place? It might help to emphasize to prospective employers what your mobile work experience taught you, especially if you can give specific examples of how an international job helped make you more resourceful or creative.
That’s because a growing pile of neuroscientific research shows that adapting to unfamiliar places and cultures creates new pathways in the brain that boost people’s ability to innovate. One such study, co-authored by Columbia B-school professor Adam Galinsky and published in the Academy of Management Journal, concluded that “leaders’ foreign professional experiences can be a critical catalyst for creativity and innovation” in their companies.
Anne Fisher is a career expert and advice columnist who writes “Work It Out,” Coins2Day’s guide to working and living in the 21st century. Each week, she’ll answer your most challenging career questions. Have one? Ask her on Twitter or email her at [email protected].