Work travel - Explore the pros and cons of travelling
Work travel
When Your Job Requires Travel
In this economy we are sometimes faced with pursuing jobs that are outside of our comfort zone and one example of this is the job that requires travel. The job may require in state travel without any overnight travel and in that case consider yourself lucky but on the other hand you may have a job that requires interstate or even global travel.
You may surprise yourself at how much you truly enjoy traveling and the spirit of adventure may add excitement to your career. For some people it can mean exotic locales and fascinating cultures but for others it may mean a frightening loss of familiarity and even danger. I will break my travel experiences into 4 parts to further explore the pros and cons of traveling for your company.
1) The local travel typically associated with field technicians and those that have local clients to support. Frequently, the job consists of seeing people outside of the greater metropolitan area your company is based in and you may have a route wherein you can visit several customers in a relatively short time span. The job requires you to visit clients and maintain a regular presence to deepen the relationship and rarely requires staying away from home for longer than the occasional overnight stay when it is a trip densely packed with visits on the outer reaches of your territory.
2) The instate travel is quite similar in many ways but where it is different is the time management rarely allows you to avoid overnight travel and you may spend more time on the road than in meetings and the road weary traveler has to discipline themselves to avoid talking themselves into excuses for poor performance. Nobody likes to go without proper sleep or exist on a diet of poor nutrition but the seasoned traveler understands the rigors of the job and how to eliminate obvious distractions.
3) The interstate traveler is perhaps the least understood in the sense that they frequently spend more time in airports than the other travelers and the dangers of missed connecting flights and poorly arranged lodging can sabotage the even the best laid plans for it can be hard to overcome the domino effect of one missed flight creating havoc and all the subsequent flights are null and void if one is not careful. This road warrior needs to have nerves of steel and know how to roll with the punches. They also need to know how to navigate city streets in strange and unfamiliar places when using their rental cars.
4) The international traveler is often envied for their exposure to new lands and new cultures and though they must travel a long way with multiple connecting flights they frequently focus on a smaller number of clients. Dangers may include adverse reactions to vaccinations, poor access to healthcare, opportunistic scammers and everything in between. Most companies will do their best to ensure that international travel arrangements are done carefully but the onus is on the traveler to take precautions.
Before immediately accepting or rejecting a job based on travel requirements think of how enriching and potentially exciting it can be to get out and see the world from another perspective. How many of us have been in a rut and learned to play it safe when perhaps we would be well suited for beginning a new chapter by hitting the road?
