Have you just gotten back from a semester or a year abroad studying or just traveling, expanding your global horizons? If so, I bet you are running pretty low on money and need a quick way to get a well-paying job. One way to up your odds of getting a good job would be to beef up your resume into experience gained from your travels. Wondering how to turn your relaxing on beaches, taking pictures of cathedrals, and figuring out the metro system in a new city into useful resume improvement? It’s actually fairly easy.

Because you are now a somewhat experienced traveler, this is very beneficial to some companies. You are familiar with other cultures of the world, have some experience with language, are willing to relocate, and are adaptable to new situations. Also, the fact that you decided to travel and live abroad shows you possess a desire to learn and are a motivated person.

Most of the skills you learned while abroad are in fact very useful to yourself and to the companies you will work for, but may make a resume seem to be cheesy or just a mass of filler information. Things like becoming more independent, developing people skills, and expressing more confidence are good things to have, but don’t write them on your resume. You can embellish upon your trip and your experience more in your cover letter, to give future employers a deeper look into what you really learned from traveling and how it will be beneficial to them.

In addition, when adding this to your resume, put it under what it is- don’t try and make it something it wasn’t. For example, your trip wouldn’t be under “Work Experience”; you could put it under something like “Other Experience”. With this, definitely write things that will apply to the business world, such as “Negotiation skills”, “Budgeting and planning”, or “Flexibility”.