Careers Involving a lot of Travel
 

Hey Everyone,

I'm a business student at the University of Calgary and I'm considering potential careers available to me.

I'm trying to figure out what type of job requires a lot of travel. This is something I'd like to try out (for a little while at least). As a young person with no family attachments it seems like being mobile (either throughout Canada or Internationally) would be an interesting career.

What do you think? For someone with a business education of course.

Furthermore, I am currently seeking employment for this summer (potentially leading to permanent after I graduate) :). I'm a Bcomm/BA (Economics) student. My past experience is in public practice accounting and M&A Advisory. If ANYONE has any openings in their company for one of the top business students in calgary (I have a resume that attests to this) could you please PM me? I can go into details in private since this is not the place.

Thanks,
KB

Consulting or Importer are two that come to mind. Lots of the folks here do that.

^

Academia
 

Academia is a super one for travel. As a research-active faculty member, I travel around 120,000 miles/annum to give talks at universities and conferences worldwide + lots of consulting. It would mean a little longer for grad school, but the flexibility of this job is super.

Some portions of accounting have a fair amount of travel related with it.

KB,

Follow the link!

http://www.supershows.ca/

Cheers :D

And if I could have gotten FF miles for that airplane kiddieland ride, I would have been SE at 6 years old LOL.

You should be more precise in your question. The right question is: "Which kinds of careers involve travel that you will actually enjoy (at least sometimes)?" For example, I know people whose weekly routine involved "get up at 4 am on Monday, take 3 connecting cheap economy flights to nowhere, rent a car and drive to the back of nowhere, spend workweek and most evenings in a dirty factory counting widgets, stay in Motel 6, fly home on Friday, write report on weekend during free time and get up and do it again the next week". :(

Or you could have a job like the one I used to have: (1) monitor international developments and develop contacts around the world in an interesting subject; (2) travel 8-12 times per year for about a week at a time (about 2/3 long-haul to major cities in Europe, Asia and Australia/NZ in bus class; the rest short-haul to major US cities flying direct); (3) spend the day in interesting meetings and conferences with colleagues; (4) spend the evenings exploring the city and eating/dining out in local restaurants with local hosts; (5) stay in 4* hotels (sometimes 5*); (6) add a few vacation days to business trips so I could spend the weekend exploring further; and (7) use contacts as a springboard to move abroad ... :)

Been there, done that, never again :) . Had to spend a week by myself in the middle-of-nowhere in rural Kentucky in early December two years ago at a dirty coal fired power station. Only hotel nearby was a Super 8 Motel at a freeway exit, only restaurant for miles was a Dennys Diner (in shiny chrome 50's retro style) attached to the Motel and the whole county was a dry one :eek: . Nearest beer was 25 miles away.

It either rained or was foggy every day as well. Very gloomy - but from a business perspective worthwhile in the end as it was my clients first large and highly significant order in penetrating the USA.

And my wife thinks travel is somehow glamourous :rolleyes:

Seriously, if you get involved in International sales and marketing, thats a role you will be travelling alot.

Wow and I thought I had it bad :D

I believe greywolf said he was a "nipple tweaker" in a past thread that asked a similar question...

I once did the "prep all weekend, 3 flights to nowhere and drive to dirty warehouse to start due diligence" trip, only to show up and discover (to my delight, actually) that I was allergic to the client and would have to turn around and go home. The investment bankers had forgotten to tell my law firm that the client (which manufactured penicillin-based drugs) had prohibited the staffing the deal with any junior staff from the law, banking and accounting firms (ie those who would be crawling around in the warehouse or handling its documents) who were allergic to penicillin. Which I was. So, a long trip for nothing (except the miles) - but it kept me out of the office for a little while and I managed to avoid some other work because people thought I was busy on the bacteria file.

This works on the "buy" side as well. I know lots of guys in procurement who are off to China or similarly exotic locales all the time.

And, of course, the consultants, but I believe they were already mentioned.

Some jobs in government have a lot of travel.

The jokes about cleaning up diseases after getting screwed by the client just kind of write themselves, don't they? :D

I have been lucky with consulting in that I have never had to do more than a couple weeks in the coal-plant zone. Mostly I have had some good destinations - Denver, San Francisco, San Antonio, Paris, Montreal. I can't really complain.

I would, however, give it all up if someone would like to hire me to be a travel writer...