How to get a job while cycle-touring

Footloose and fancy free? Need to eventually earn some cash to pay for your gallivanting? Here is a practical guide to jobseeking at a distance (based on a actual events).

1. Make contacts with potential employee/influential people/potential referees before departure and express desire for gainful employment.

2. Meet up with one of those people and realize afterward that your ‘casual chat’ was actually an interview.

3. Hope that you weren’t too casual.

4. Depart on adventurous mission across unknown lands with electronic CV ready to go.

5. Submit applications online from small town in western Mongolia.

6. Beg widely via email for referees to submit references whilst in small towns in Russia.

7. Wait for notification period to begin, while investigating mobile phone coverage in south-eastern Kazakhstan.

8. Spend days vacillating in Almaty before heading off anyway and hoping that you will have both reception and interview offers.

9. Get first offer while camping between fields two days out of Almaty.

10. Spend next few days noting number of bars of reception as you head to semi-arid canyon country.

11. Camp on plateau in between two mountain ranges not far from main highway towards China. Best reception for miles around.

12. Await telephone interview in tent vestibule with morning coffee in hand.

13. No phone call. Wonder what happened.

14. Spend extra day on plateau, riding back to nearby town for supplies.

15. Find out that one of the interview panel was called away to emergency. Reschedule interview for following week..

16. Ride back towards Almaty through rugged peaks and plateaus with no reception.

17. Arrive at friendly couchsurfing host’s apartment in Almaty and apologise for upcoming early morning phone calls.

18. First interview at 0530 following morning. Brain not fully functioning.

19. Second interview at 0500 the next morning. Ditto.

20. Await offers, continue cycling.

21. Receive three job offers and spend several days simulating potential career paths, pros and cons of each.

22. Accept one half-year job, negotiate another.

23. Congratulations, you have successfully arranged gainful employment!

Stay tuned for the next installment in our ‘How-to’ series: Signing Contracts while Cycling through Desert Oases.