Can you help me brainstorm potential jobs that involve short shift (ie 1-2 weeks travel) at a time, eg supporting youth group travel etc?

random as always 😉

Where do you want to travel to? I am a geologist and have been all over the place. Time away depends on who you work for, some companies have time caps, others don’t.

Any smallish UK based company that sells worldwide, that needs to provide technical support. Or the sales person that gets the deal.

MP?

Contiki tour manager:

http://www.bfound.net/detail.aspx?jobId=118172&CoId=2018&rq=2

Contiki driver:

http://www.contiki.com/pages/282

loads… why do you want to travel?

I have been traveling for work since I was 21, some years later I’m still doing it. I’ve seen marriage breakups, dysfunctional relationships, alcohol problems and much more.

Apart from that…
Anything technical that is contracted – air emissions monitoring was my first one, geotechnical, sampling, data collection
after that
working for a company over multiple sites, great chance to travel and become a local at the holiday inn
sales/training and tech support – my current source of air miles…

work travel is a source of air miles(or equivalent), hotel points and anything else you can get.

Watch this in a hotel room alone…
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbbXGW5czKo[/video]

Thanks for the responses guys, sorry for the slow reply.

I love travelling (and loathe vegetating in the UK) and really enjoyed working as an exploration geo in Aus…however month rosters sucked so would be looking at max. 1 week at a time away from home base (currently Exeter) as I would actually like to keep this relationship!

I have a BSc Environmental Earth Science, loads of excellent references from previous jobs inc care work, cycle mechanic/guide, retail, exploration geo inc. report writing/field investigations/project planning/budgets/landholder liason etc.

Travelling for work generally sucks IME, but mine was always office/boardroom based for never really got to see anything other than hotels and offices, which are surprisingly similar no matter where you are 🙂

I loved it for about 6 months, then realised that it was destroying my life, but only seemed to get it down to a realistic level after a few more years. Week long trips turned into month long ones. One six week trip turned into 12 months. “Once a week” turned into “twice a week”. Travelling on a Monday morning turned into leaving on a Sunday night. Being guaranteed to be home on a Friday turned into hopefully getting home on a Saturday which then turned into there being no point in going home since I’d be leaving on the Sunday anyway.

If you can get some form of contractual certainty as to the amount of travelling/staying away from home you’ll have to do then that’s helpful, but in my case it just sort of creeped up until I was never home. I suppose I always had the option to just say “no more”, but it would have been pretty odd for someone to do that and I didn’t want to be the stand out guy for those reasons. In hindsight though…

travel opportunities here Not sure if they are the short term trips the OP is after though

Basically I would like a job that is:
-mostly outdoors
-genuinely interesting
-involves short roster travel
-can use the skills/qualifications should I relocate abroad
-! doesn’t involve wearing a suit every day

But yes, mikewsmith I’v seen and experienced the down side of travelling jobs and I’d like to marry this one at some point 😉

I have a reasonable chunk of inheritance that I could use for training etc too, I even had a couple crazy evenings thinking about a rotary or fixed wing CPL but I just don’t think the jobs are out there at the end.

I have 2 dream jobs so far, one not achievable (RN Search and Rescue Pilot) and one potentially do-able (National Park Officer- New Zealand).

Completely open to ideas from you guys!

I agree with peterfile, it wears you down. I had a 3 week trip turn into a 12 week one once, I had booked leave about a year in advance and the company wanted me to cancel it, it took me giving them my resignation before they let me have 4 days off (including flying time) to get to a mates wedding. I flew back out the following week for another 4.
I feel like I missed a lot of my 20’s working and not having fun, and now with a little one on the way something needs to be done.

traveling for a week at a time would suck

i do 4 or 5 4-6 week trips a year and much prefer doing that to spending heaps of time in airports and planes.

I’ve been doing 2 week trips to Africa about 4-5 times a year for the last 28 years. That’s not excessive and it gives me and Mrs Gti a rest from each other though it’s tough on our son. The trips can be boring, lonely, stressful and even frightening, they are always tiring and do huge damage to my fitness but I enjoy them on the whole because I enjoy the customers and agents I meet.

The shameful thing is that British careers advisors simply don’t realise that there are thousands of companies out there who have difficulty in recruiting educated and honest candidates to represent them overseas. When I saw careers advisors at school and at college they saw my language talents and told me I could be a teacher, an interpreter or a translator – muppets.

this is probably one of the most honest discussions on travel I have read in a while.
Shame is I’m trying to get more trips currently as it’s good money. Just crap for life.

i should maybe add that i currently do it as like mike says the moneys good to make big overpayments on my mortgage so i can jack the mega trips side of it when i have kids

I quite like travelling for work. Sometimes it’s every week, sometimes it’s here and there.

The family don’t much like it though, which is not so good. Hopefully I’ll be able to balance it out with lots of WFH like I did last year, but we’ll see.

Our support guys tend to do lots of 1-2 week trips. They go off to a particular customer to do a particular project, upgrade, bug hunt, run a trial, install new kit etc. Then they come back to the UK and do remote / 3rd line support for the rest of the year.

globalti, footflaps, molgrips…..what do you do if you don’t mind me asking?

well currently the money is there if I travel as I’m fairly casual WFH waiting for projects. Though if 2014 starts like we hope I may need an apartment in Perth and Brisbane. Oh joy summer in 40c

Anyway to continue with the negatives, modern cheap hotels have walls so thin you can hear the hooker next door counting the money, there are some stingy gits out there so expect to stay in a B+B in Scunthorpe once in your life, Redcar is a hole and remember if you have some money left in your allowance get the barman to charge it out as food and give you money for the pool table then stuff the pockets with bar mats.

I agree with you globalti, I had an interview with careers advice and quickly realised they were only geared up for placing folk into low end retail work.

It is so frustrating not being able to use my experiences from Australia here in the UK!

I have had some great times working away and I would encourage anyone to do it for a short period in their life. Depending on your job you can get to see some great places and have some good pub stories. A lot of your travelling experience will depend on your employer and whether or not the y are set up to cater for the needs of those staff who work away. It is definately something to discuss before undertaking work travel.
I did 6 weeks on 3 off in Burkina Faso for about a year and really enjoyed it, the people were sound, the food was alright, the rooms were clean and the bar was cheap! But I have been on jobs which were crap. I have a few simples rules for doing site works,
1)I want to know when I’m going and when I’m coming home.
2)Somewhere decent to sleep.
3) food which is edible.
4) support from my home office if needed.
If one of these rules is broken i know it will be a horrible job.

“1)I want to know when I’m going and when I’m coming home.
2)Somewhere decent to sleep.
3) food which is edible.
4) support from my home office if needed.
If one of these rules is broken i know it will be a horrible job.”

what he said – a good boss can be worth their weight in gold – preferably someone whos done the field work and doesnt just count pennys and switch their phone off at 18:00 . My boss knows i will take steps to fix any of the above if they are not right – even if it involves going to a hotel or a restaturant – never any hassles to claim it back.

I represent a company that manufactures industrial fragrance concentrates for use in the production of soaps, detergents, toiletries etc. The fragrance industry is booming and is expected to continue booming as more people around the world acquire more wealth and demand better products. Our main export territory is Nigeria where we are doing mind-boggling business, which is expected to grow by at least 30% in the next five years as the hitherto non-existent household cleaning products industry begins to take shape. We are expanding so fast at the moment that we are investing £5m in a new robotic compounding factory, self-built by builders who we payroll as we have so many projects permanently on the go.

Google fragrance and flavour manufacturers or look on the website of Soap, Perfumery and Cosmetics magazine for the dozens of similar companies in the UK and Europe.

Sales, technical support, trainer, consultant.

It depends where you are at in your life. It’s a strain on family-life for sure. If you are are on your own or with a very independent partner then why not take the opportunity?

My experience is with environmental consultancies. There are always options for travel if you get into the right company in the right area, but not in a guaranteed 1-week-at-a-time sense. Travel abroad comes up with projects, so it could be weeks away to work in the field or short term travel for meetings and then back in the office for a year! If you mean you want to work outdoors within the UK, then there will be plenty of engineering consultancies in Exeter that should take env science graduates and send you out in the field for contaminated land assessments. If you are good at maths, a hydrogeology Masters from Birmingham should virtually guarantee you a job. Alternatively, what about engineering type roles for the Met Office (i.e. maintain and develop observation systems which would involve periods of working in the field and periods in a workshop environment)? My experience of oil & gas and mining field jobs is generally longer rotas, as you suggest.

I work in Engineering – We build refrigeration plant and A/C kit for Navy ships and Submarines.
We also support our kit, wherever it may be in the world (UK + Foreign Navies)

I’m a Project Manager, so the opportunities to travel can be pretty huge, however as I’ve got two little kids I’ve actively avoided spending too much time overseas.
I was working away in Denmark when my oldest daughter started to crawl – I know it is no big deal – but at the time I felt rotten that I had missed it.

Most of my trips are short haul (Europe) but some of my colleagues regularly do 2/3 weeks at a time in India/Russia/Australia/Canada/Dubai
I’m sure when the kids are a bit older I’ll be a bit happier about being away for longer.

Ultimately, you are there to work, which in my case usually means long days in either a factory or a shipyard, followed by nights in a dull hotel – and dull hotels are pretty similar where ever you are.
However, I’ve had some pretty amazing meals out, and been to a few places i’d have never been had I not been there for work.

We have Service Engineers who spend 200+ nights a year away from home.. crazy but the rewards are pretty high.

globalti, footflaps, molgrips…..what do you do if you don’t mind me asking?

I work for a small (100ish people) Telecoms company, who design microwave radios which we sell to Mobile Networks around the world. Most of our work is in Africa / Middle East, but we have networks all over the place (UK, Russia, South America, etc). You’d need network skills mainly (IP, Ethernet) as that’s the more complex bit.

IT consultant. And not a waffly useless middle management one, I actually do stuff 🙂

I’m a product expert so I go where people need my skills. I’m supposed to do short engagements guiding customers but since my skills are so rare and the product so subtle I end up doing all the work as well.

So far I’ve been to London 3 months, Nottingham 2 weeks, Preson 2 months, Hampshire 6 months ish, then home for 8 months and London for 3. With gaps in between spent at home, and of course I’m home at weekends. Currently only 4 days away.