Study Abroad and Increase Your Professional Value

Studying abroad is an exciting and potentially life-changing experience. You can learn a new language, get to know a new culture and make friends you will never forget. But how does it affect your post-college career? Why should potential employers care about your adventures living in a foreign country? If you have questions about the professional value of studying abroad or wonder how you can demonstrate the value of your travels on your resume and in job interviews, here are five tips on making your experience count:

1. Acquire/Demonstrate Fluency in a Foreign Language

Photo by agaw.dilim on flickr.com

One of the most valuable things most students learn while studying abroad is how to communicate fluently and confidently in a foreign language. Depending on your career and location, this can be an invaluable asset. In the United States, an increasing number of opportunities require or reward bilingual applicants, particularly in languages such as Spanish, Chinese and Arabic. If you plan to look for work in the country where you studied or in a nation where the same language is spoken, demonstrating fluency in that language will be even more important.

2. Knowledge of Foreign Culture and Market

In addition to knowing the language, real communication requires knowledge of a culture that can only be gained by immersion in a foreign country. And in the business world, knowledge of your host nation’s particular market dynamics will be required to succeed. It is amazing how deep relationship building relies on the most incidental things — a shared love of the same odd foods, laughing about a terrible commercial that aired a few years ago, playing the same sport in college. This is the social capital you use to win over friends, potential employers and clients.

3. Connect with Diverse People

In today’s globally interconnected society, it is increasingly important to be able to find common ground and forge connections with people who don’t share your exact background. Spending a semester or a year in a foreign country while you’re still relatively young is the ideal exercise in connecting with distant others and will help you to demonstrate or acquire a skill set that you will use in ways you don’t even realize for the rest of your life. Even if the job description doesn’t say so, these days, nearly everyone values these qualities.

4. Shows You Take Risks

The timid don’t travel the world. They stay home and watch TV, stick with their oldest friends, marry their high school sweethearts. It isn’t a bad life, but it isn’t ambitious either. You need to take risks in order to reap big rewards, to move up in the world, and potential employers recognize risk-takers as future leaders. Studying abroad is definitely a risk, especially in a culturally or geographically distant nation, like Cuba, South Africa or China. No matter where you studied, make it clear what was at stake and play up the idea that this particular risk paid off.

5. Networking Opportunities

Everyone has networking opportunities in college. You meet hundreds or thousands of classmates, study with at least a dozen different professors and make contact with local people who may become friends or mentors. But when you study abroad, you (temporarily) leave all of those contacts behind and start again from scratch. Particularly if you hope to work outside your home country, these contacts are invaluable. It is particularly wise to keep in touch with your contacts abroad, so that you do not appear opportunistic when you come looking for a job a year or two later.

All of these factors can help to make your job search fruitful if you make full use of your foreign contacts and articulate just what the experience of studying abroad meant to you in interviews. It will help to be specific about the memories and takeaways that mattered most to you from that experience, as long as you don’t get too personal or oversell your foreign adventure. Remember that your potential employers are interested in the full breadth of your experience, and not just the semester or two you spent overseas. But if you are the right candidate for the job, displaying what you learned abroad might help you seal the deal.