1 . The Rise of the Grown-Up Gap Year

It was 2012,Tim Potter, who was in public relations, had just finished working on the London Olympics alongside his partner.A career break to go travelling — or a “grown-up gap year”— seemed like a natural thing to both of them.

The couple spent four months traveling around Asia. Next, they flew to Mexico via Canada, worked their way down through Central America, and spent a month in both Colombia and Brazil.

    1     Within three weeks of his return, he was in another job (he’d interviewed for it in a phone booth in Colombia). Today, he’s managing director of the marketing agency Hunt & Gather.

But is Potter’s experience common or did he get lucky? Some people assume taking a career break will automatically be off-putting to potential employers, but according to Emily Bain, managing director of secretarial recruitment agency Bain and Gray, it can actually be quite the opposite.

“As an employer, I see it as a positive,” she says.     2     In fact, it’s been an upward trend that’s been steadily growing since the 2008 recession (经济衰退). “People couldn’t get work so they just took off” she says.

Tim Fryer, U.K. manager at STA Travel, says grown-up gap years can have a positive effect on your career. “Taking a break gives travelers time to refocus on work as well as the space to reflect on what exactly it is they want to do,” he explains.

    3     For many, recovering from illness, the loss of a love one or something like divorce can be the trigger (诱因). And some simply have an ambition to see a certain place — or places — by a certain age.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, though. Emily Bain admits that some employers’ instinct is to turn their noses up at someone who’s had a break. However, she says, the duty is on the traveler to sell their experience as something that will benefit their future employer. “You have to explain the whole picture,” she says. “Making your CV (简历) gap accountable actually brings your profile to life.” So, don’t hide it — make a big deal of it.

Bain holds that although gap years are acceptable, it is still important to learn some kind of skill regardless of whatever else you may be doing during this time.     4     But it doesn’t have to be academic. “I had a client who learned a special kind of weaving in India, and that to me is really interesting. It became a real talking point.”