As some dopers know, I’m quite interested in a career in medicine. However, if that falls through, one thing I’ve always wanted to do is travel extensively around the world. Doing this on a company’s dime sounds much better than paying for it myself, so I’m curious: What jobs and/or careers require you to take a lot of international trips?
Adam
Sales, consulting. Helps if you’re multilingual.
Actually, it’s not nearly as convenient a way of seeing the world as you might at first expect. And there’s a little thing called jet lag that can really put a kink in your colon.
My friend and I used to work for an undersea fiber-optic cable producer (hence my username) that involved a lot of travel (for him, anyway, though I got to go to Hawaii once). Most of the cable networks made landfall in at least a dozen different countries, and each landfall station needed about a week or two of work to get everything up and running. As a result, he’d be gone for months at a time, setting up one station after another. He went to every Asian country east of Iran that has a coast on that job, as well as travelling to Australia, NZ, Guam, Hawaii and North America a lot.
So I heard. But I hoping my strong desire to travel will cast a shadow on the jetlag factor.
Did your friend enjoy it?
Adam
Jet lags not TOO bad if you are just going to Europe. Problem is with a lot of those jobs, you don’t really have time to see the sites. There’s also the possibility that your work takes you to Bumbklefuk, GR and Jairquewateir, FR instead of Berlin or Paris.
My B-i-L does training for DHS and DoD. It’s essentially a travel job and he does more than 60,000 miles per year internationally. He says that, while he does see some great sites (he’s got pix of himself everywhere from Toronto to the Ta Mahal), it’s not as much fun as one might think. As evidence he points to his divorce a few years ago.
Working in International development, especially humanitarian emergencies, can take you to all sorts of places.
www.alertnet.org/thepeople/jobs/index.htm
He did, although he missed being away from his wife and kids for so long at a time, plus being in some really crappy locales (most landing stations have to be really far from major population centers to avoid boat damage). It was a good “young guy’s job”. He went on to a new job (we got laid off when our main client went bankrupt) as IT manager for a medical supply company which also had him travelling a lot (he was in charge of all their Asian branches), and now does the same job for an automaker that has him mostly staying in Japan.
Have you considered a military career? You could, for example, get assigned to a duty station in Europe and see lots of the local area on your normal time off, plus you get 30 days paid vacation each year. It’s not unusual to be reassigned every 2-3 years, sometimes more frequently. There are other benefits such as specialized training, structured advancement, retirement after 20 years, etc.
I second a career in the military. Lots of travel, lots of responsibility at an early age. I frankly do not understand why more young people do not leap at the chance to beam out of their hometowns.
Of course I suffer from gran mal wanderlust.
I have said it before - tradeshow freight forwarding has tons of travel plus downtime once the tradeshow is underway, so does booth design or anything like that.
Agent, I can understand your urge to travel. I’ve got that urge myself. Some questions for you:
In many cases, I’m just not sure business travel is the best way to see the world. A couple of examples to illustrate my point - a year or so ago, I took a few months off and did a big backpacking trip. That was great fun, and I visited 10 or 15 different countries, met a lot of new people etc.
Right now, I’m working overseas. I’ve been here a month and a half, and in that time, I’ve tended to travel only between the place I sleep and the place I work. I did get a long weekend at one point, which let me do touristy stuff, but I mostly stick within a few miles of the office.
Which of these trips sounds better? I’d recommend the backpacking thing. If you don’t have a career yet, I’m guessing you’re in college or university, or are just leaving another job. The perfect commitment-free time to grab a cheap backpack, passport and ATM card, and find a discount flight to somewhere exotic. Much better than training for a travelling career later on, where you’ll see a succession of comfortable, soulless hotels and the insides of a variety of office buildings…
My mother does a lot of international traveling: she does database stuff for manufacturing. In the past two years alone, she’s been to to seven or eight Aisian countires and Europe, and to most places multiple times. But I will add to the chorous that she doesn’t see much while she is there: generally speaking, you want these trips to be efficient, so you work your butt off the whole time. There’s also the fact that you probably aren’t with anyone–my mom MIGHT travel with a coworker, but often it’s just her. So there isn’t anyone to go ramble through markets with or see the sights, even if you do get time: the people she visits might take her to see things, but there is a certain stiltedness to that, I think, that comes whenever two professionals are trying to be professional with each other. If you like to explore things on your own, this isn’t a problem, but be aware that rambling through an exotic locale alone is very different than doing so with a partner.
To expand on just how busy these sorts of jobs can be: my mom’s accrured almost a million frequent flyer miles in the past decade. She hasn’t had a chance to use them yet.
Stick with medicine, then go for a carreer in sales/consultanting for one of the large pharmacutical companies like Pfizer, they have plants all over the world and spend millions of dollars to fly folks there.
There is always the State Department. Those people not only travel all the time but they get to live abroad as well. The drawback is that you may not be living somewhere that is necessarily nice.
I used to work in mergers and acquisitions for a Fortune 500. Our International guy did a lot of travel.
BUT…He went to Paris four times before he saw the Eiffel Tower, and then he had an extra ten minutes in his schedule so he had the cabbie drive by it. It wasn’t unusual for him to arrive in Singapore, spend fourteen hours a day in meetings for two days, then fly to Toyko overnight, spend two days in meetings - again fourteen hour days, then fly somewhere else.
I now work for what is functionally an engineering/manufacturing firm. We have plants overseas, and frequently send people to Asia and Europe. We don’t schedule them enough time to sightsee. Sometimes people are fortunate enough to add a day or two onto the schedule and spend a weekend seeing something, but few people see much in the day or two, we fly you out on Sunday, expect you to work Monday through Friday in the international location, and expect you back at your U.S. desk Monday morning.
The inside of office buildings and hotel rooms looks pretty much the same the world over. Don’t expect to do a lot of sightseeing on a corporate dime.
A good friend of ours got a job out of Med school working for the CDC. I seem to recall she’s shifted to WHO now, but she’s done long stints in Kenya and most recently in Bangkok in epidemiology (sp?). May not be quite what you’re looking for but it’s very front lines and exciting.
Drug runner/mule will also get you international travel and is probably exciting but does not come highly recommended.
Anything related to the World Bank or IMF can result in lots of international travel. Several years ago I was part of a project team under the auspices of the World Bank. The project lasted for 2 years. During that time I made about 12 overseas trips (London, Vienna, Paris, New York, Rome). I can assure you that any “glamour” attaching to the notion of overseas travel wears off very quickly. It just becomes a hard slog.
Actually, co workers can be a hindrance during business travel. Many times, they’re going to want everything to be just the same as it is in the USA. I’ve done a bit of domestic business travel and always hated that I got stuck going to chain restaurants and movies, 'cause no one wanted to do anything more exciting.
If you go with coworkers who suck. In consulting, you generally work with other smart, sophisticated, well traveled folks. Ideally, you get to go to a country with someone who’s been there.