Looking for Gap Year jobs can be tricky, so much so that one can find themselves walking the streets in a foreign country handing out their CV’s to every shop, café or business they can find. It’s one of the challenges of taking a Gap Year, we checked out some of the more popular Gap Year jobs, allowing individuals to be more prepared before they venture off into that awesome adventure that is a Gap Year or an Overseas Experience or a Sabbatical, or whatever you want to call it! 

Au pair: Despite what people think, Au pairs aren’t just other people’s toilet cleaners. Au Pairs are individuals whom are hired by host families in foreign countries to help assist in household duties as well as helping with childcare. The Au pair is usually provided with accommodation along with a salary or allowance. The idea behind Au pairing is to be able to travel and learn about cultures especially when having to live with them.

Cool sites to see:
Check out what Wikipedia has to say on the industry of Au pairing.
Au Pair.com, a pretty cool Au pair database website: http://www.aupair.com/
The International Au Pair Association: http://www.iapa.org/

Travel documents can be a heavy admin job, from Passports to visas and even work permits, it’s not an easy process but rewarding once everything is order and you can go about travelling or working through another country…

Passports: are country specific, it’s an individual’s initial document that allows them the opportunity to travel to another country. These are obtained at a countries government office where passports and identity documents are issued. Check out Wikipedia for their breakdown on Passports: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passport

Visa’s and Work Permits: This is the next step to entering a country, visa’s are sometimes built into ones passport whereby countries have agreements with each other allowing individuals to travel freely with a specific passport. If that is not the case then individuals will have to apply for a visa to enter a country, these visa’s vary from standard travel to even working holiday visas. Work permits are issued on a number of factors, some nationalities are able to freely work in a foreign country just based on their passports and some have to apply for their work permits. Applications for work permits are country specific and in some cases where countries don’t have agreements with each other, individuals have to prove that they are able to work in a foreign country without displacing or taking the place of a local with the same training or skills ability.  Check out Anywork Anywhere, a really comprehensive website that provides clear breakdowns of various options and requirements that countries have for individuals regarding working and travelling. Further they provide a Working Holidays and Temporary Visas Chart which is a very cool and quick way of seeing where an individual can travel and which countries have work/travel agreements!