Career break guide

A step-by-step guide on how to plan your career break and decide what to do.

Step 1: Decide what you want out of your career break

Is your career break going to:

Help you in your career?
Help you develop useful skills?
Make you more confident?
Expand your horizons?
Develop your outside-of-work interests?
Be an amazing experience?
All of the above?

If you're unsure, have a look at career break ideas for help.

Step 2: Decide what you're going to do on your career break

The four main areas are:

Voluntary work abroad
Paid work abroad
Training/studying
World travel

To look through the options, you can:

Remember, the career break you decide on should fulfill whatever you chose in step 1. You may only get the chance to do one career break, so it's vitally important it's going to give you what you want and need from the experience.

Step 3: Decide what to do about your job

Your main options are:

Take a sabbatical (and come back to the same job and company)
Leave (but return to a similar job)
Change career

You can of course decide what to do while you're on your career break (a surprising number of people do that). But if you do leave your job with no future plans, make sure you have enough savings to support you during your decision-making process. And don't burn any bridges.

Step 4: Organise your career break

You should first contact your career break company and find out what you need to do, whether that's sorting out visas, agreeing a leaving date with your workplace, or simply buying more sensible shoes.

Then you only need to sort out what to do with your stuff!