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8 Jobs that Pay You to Travel the World

Graduating doesn’t mean you need to find a job, work regular office hours returning home to wind down with Netflix reruns.

There are jobs that pay well, let you travel internationally experiencing different cultures first-hand, and make friends with people from all walks of life.

With the rise of remote working, more people are opting for a digital nomad lifestyle, traveling to locations around the globe, working from anywhere with a half-decent internet connection.

That is an option, but it’s also going to call for a little more skill because many remote jobs are done on a freelance basis, meaning you’d need to become your own boss.

For those who’d rather have a boss, the support of a team, and steady pay you can rely on, you need an employer with a need for staff to travel.

8 Jobs that Pay You to Travel the World

Jobs that Pay You to Travel the World

Consulting

To work as a consultant, you need a specialty.

Technology and business consulting are the main sectors; however, consultants will generally have expertise in a narrower sub-topic.

In the IT space, consultants can travel to businesses around the country to provide system integration services, manage software, or specialize in enterprise architecture.

Consulting agencies will want work experience. The more specialist projects you can get on your resume, the easier it’ll be to get hired.

For brands with branches around the world, one contract could see you jetting off to multiple international locations.

Retail buyers

Retail buyers are responsible for sourcing supplies of stock for retail stores.

All the major stores and chain department stores need buyers to keep their inventory stock up with products they know will shift off the shelves.

Whilst much of the work will be an analysis of sales across stores and departments, when buying season rolls around, it’s up to the buyer to travel to locations far and wide, source products, negotiate prices for bulk orders and select the items for retailers to stock for the following season.

 Jobs that Pay You to Travel the World

Flight Attendant

Flight attendants are a popular choice for careers with international travel.

At entry-level, your career starts as a junior cabin crew member working on regional flights, but you’ll still need more than customer service experience to land the job.

Preference goes to those with extra skills that can serve the airlines better, such as having CPR training and/or being fluent in a foreign language.

The core skill airlines want asides from customer service is the sales experience. In particular, on budget airlines where onboard sales are revenue drivers.

If you can take care of customer service, passenger safety, and boost sales revenue, you’ll be an in-demand flying angel.

Ski Instructor

Fancy a career on the slopes of glistening snow-covered mountains? Consider winter sports, which include teaching skiing and snowboarding.

Pick a destination, get fluent in the language of the country you want to work in, and get qualified as a ski instructor.

Each country has different entry requirements, but they’ll always want talent first. The International Ski Instructors Association is the world body overseeing qualifications for ski instructors around the world.

Within ski resorts, there’s a range of jobs available too. You could work as a resort chalet host, in hospitality (waitering and bartending), a ski lift operator, or as a piste basher responsible for driving the Snowcat around the slopes to groom the surface for skiers. It is possible to work on ski resorts while training for an instructor qualification.

Teach English as a Second Language

With English being the world’s most used language, there’s an international need for native English speakers to teach foreign students the language of the world.

Positions are available internationally, some for summer seasons, some for a semester, others year-round salaried positions with international brands, including Disney.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k86u0svxul4

If settling down isn’t something you plan to do, you can sign up with a number of English Teaching Agencies for short or long-term contracts in positions around the globe including Taiwan, China, Costa Rica and every country in Europe.

The main certification most employers look for is TEFL certification, which is the abbreviation for Teaching English as a Foreign Language.

If you want to work exclusively in teaching adults, the CELTA (Certificate of English Language Teaching to Adults) certification would be more appropriate.

Another is TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages), however, this is mostly used to teach non-English speaking students in an English-speaking country.

If you want to travel the world teaching English as a second language, TEFL or CELTA is the way to go. Choose your certification based on whether you want to teach adults or children.

Jobs that Pay You to Travel the World
Photo by Igor Starkov from Pexels

Lifeguarding

Anywhere in the world with a beach resort or any water sport activities such as white-water rafting will employ lifeguards.

There are also opportunities to work in hotel resorts with pools as well as aboard cruise liners.

If you love the water, are a strong swimmer and like to hit the gym, being a lifeguard will get you free access to gyms and swimming pools.

To work internationally, you’ll need an ILS International Certificate.

The training for certification is intensive and it’s ideal for getting any cabin crew job on a cruise liner because a waiter or bartender serving cocktails on the top deck is going to be more valuable with proven diving competency, first aid training, and the skills to save lives.

Jobs that Pay You to Travel the World

Events Planner

Events planners, sometimes referred to as travel coordinators are a specialist niche in the corporate travel industry that covers meetings, incentives, conferences, and exhibitions – referred to in short as MICE.

Large corporations with a need for annual or semi-annual conferences, and/or exhibitions, a number of events throughout the year, and senior staff needing to attend meetings nationally or internationally will hire their own travel co-ordinators.

Those with less frequent travel needs hire travel agencies that specialize in corporate travel/tourism.

Agencies tend to focus on one of the four sectors, such as incentive travel, which is used to arrange employee outings for team-building activities.

A similar term that’s rising in popularity is ‘leisure’ travel, which is mostly a business trip with an extra day or two tacked on for employee leisure time.

Other corporate travel agencies may specialize in exhibition planning and conferences.

Event planners will travel far and wide working with professional event management agency that has enough experience and knowledge in this field.

Within this field, you can travel to far-off places working with local tourism specialists abroad, and when you feel the time’s right to settle down and put down roots, switch from event planning to regional event management in a local city.

Sales Professional

Every business succeeds by selling something and they’ll hire the best salespeople to expand their distribution channels and increase sales.

If you want to travel the world in a sales career, look for jobs with multinational companies. National stores will only need you to travel nationally.

Working with a multinational company, provided you have a proven track record in leading sales teams and increasing sales, you could be based in the corporate HQ, but globetrot frequently to other offices around the world to help boost the sales in regional offices overseas.

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