12 High-Demand Skills You’ll Build During a Gap Year
For students on the verge of graduating high school, taking a gap year before starting college holds the promise of fun adventures, independence, world travel, new friends, and once-in-a-lifetime experiences. But a productive gap year can also impart valuable life skills that will stand out on resumes and college applications.
While it may feel like trying to find a job or land a paid internship is far in the future, the skills and values gained during a gap year set you up for success in nearly every area of life, both work-related and personal.
While everyone will walk away from their gap year with their own takeaways, new skills, and life lessons, here are some top skills you’ll learn during a gap year abroad that are always highly sought-after and in-demand by potential employers.
12 Gap Year Skills That’ll Look Great on a Resume
Here are some of the stand-out skills you’ll walk away with after taking a gap year, setting you up for success during college and after college graduation.
1. Communication skills
Gap years are all about meeting new people, whether you’re staying with a host family, working as a live-in nanny, living abroad, or participating in a group trip. By interacting with people from different cultures and backgrounds, you develop better communication skills like active listening, offering feedback, and asking questions. Being able to communicate respectfully and effectively, both verbally and nonverbally, is an invaluable skill for all kinds of careers and building a professional network.
2. Self-confidence
For many students, gap years are the first steps toward freedom and independence. You learn how to face and tackle new problems with grace, trust your judgment, and believe in your abilities. With that comes increased self-confidence and self-esteem, which improve your life in myriad ways. You feel more capable, are happier, have more energy, and have stronger relationships.
Kirstyn Guevara, who participated on Sea|mester’s 80-day Fiji to Bali voyage in 2023, says:
“Sea|mester offered more of the smaller things that I was looking at like diving and learning how to sail. That was a major thing for me. I wanted to learn how to sail, but I started from nothing. I don’t live near the ocean, but I learned it all during my gap year!”
Employers love employees who are confident in themselves and their skills, as it makes for better work output, a happier workplace, and most importantly, a happier you.
3. Problem-solving
Embarking on a gap year, you’ll face new challenges and problems you’ve never dealt with. Maybe you got lost in a foreign country and can’t communicate with the locals to figure out where to go. Maybe you’re part of a group activity that can’t reach a consensus about something. Whatever the scenario, learning how to tackle the challenges life throws at you in a more controlled environment teaches you problem-solving skills like analysis and creative thinking.
4. Resourcefulness
From sailing around the world on a boat to living in a different country, gap years teach you how to think on your toes, make decisions, and work with what’s available to find solutions. Learning how to be resourceful will serve you well in all sorts of jobs, as it shows that you can problem-solve quickly and creatively and make and implement decisions on your own.
5. Team-building
Participating in a gap year program with a group helps develop your team-building skills, as you all need to work together to solve problems and create solutions. For Sea|mester, that might mean alternating responsibilities and tasks using chore wheels or taking turns on the watch team. By working with your fellow crew members, you learn how to cooperate and collaborate with others to ensure everything gets done and everyone shares the workload. Knowing how to work well as part of a team is a crucial part of most workplaces.
6. Conflict resolution
When living in close quarters with other people for an extended period, like during a volunteer abroad program or an educational semester, conflicts and problems are bound to arise. Whether you learn how to mitigate issues between yourself and others or help solve disputes between third parties, you’ll learn conflict resolution skills that will always come in handy in the workplace.
7. Organization
Traditional schools give you foundations for staying organized, but it’s a whole different ball game when you’re responsible for your own schedule. No matter how you spend your gap year — from taking classes for college credits, working a job to save money, or traveling — you’ll master skills in time management, staying on top of your own deadlines, and scheduling.
8. Cultural awareness and sensitivity
Spending some or all of your gap year traveling teaches you how to be a better citizen of the world. You learn how to be respectful of diverse cultures, backgrounds, and beliefs, building bridges and creating connections while making sure everyone feels understood and appreciated. In this global economy, being culturally sensitive and knowing how to work well with people from around the world is a tremendous asset.
9. New languages
Traveling during your gap year may also provide a chance to learn a new language or master a foreign language that you already speak. You can take language classes or spend time in local communities with native speakers for real-life, experiential learning. Knowing multiple languages looks fantastic on a resume and opens you up to work opportunities across the globe.
10. Self-awareness
With its opportunities for personal growth and development, taking a gap year helps you better understand who you are and how you’re perceived through introspection and reflection. Being able to pause and look at yourself and your actions objectively makes you a more well-rounded, mature individual. From a career perspective, this means you’ll be more level-headed, thoughtful, and considerate.
11. Resilience and grit
Just like life, a gap year will throw plenty of fresh, new challenges your way, which you’ll learn to tackle and overcome. Learning to be tenacious, resilient, and determined when the going gets tough serves you well both with work and life, showing you how strong and capable you are.
12. Leadership
Taken together, many of these skills also have the markings of being a leader. You know how to communicate and build relationships, solve problems, resolve conflict, make decisions, and be positive and empathetic. These are all skills that can quickly advance you into senior roles and leadership positions.
All of these skills and more are learned and mastered during a semester sailing around the world with Sea|mester. Living on a small ship for one of our structured gap year travel programs, you spend full days with your sailing group, working together to solve all sorts of problems. You share spaces and responsibilities, which teaches team-building, cooperation, communication, empathy, and conflict resolution. You learn and grow together, sharing unforgettable new experiences and seeing the world from new perspectives. All the while, you’re working toward your goals by taking educational classes and courses, earning certifications, and honing important hard skills and soft skills.
With new friends and trusted instructors by your side, you step outside your comfort zone to discover what you’re capable of and try new things. When the time comes to disembark, you’ve made incredible memories but also gained desirable skills that will catch the eye of potential employers and help you stand out from the crowd. Showcasing that you’ve learned and mastered these skills in a real-world setting, you demonstrate maturity, ingenuity, and competence.
Make the most of your gap year
Showcasing independence, ambition, confidence, and real-world experience, gap years can be real resume boosters. Chart your own course sailing with Sea|mester, embarking on brave, new adventures while also actively working toward your goals on the horizon.
About The Author – Mike Meighan
Mike is Sea|mester’s Executive Director & Co-Founder and has over 25 years of experience running experiential education gap year and study abroad programs for high school graduates.