Road Warrior – Part 1
If you are tired of looking for a job in your local job market, have few friends and family in the city you live in, no pets and enjoy travel and staying in hotels then a career as a road warrior might be for you. Imagine waking up in Denver, flying to Connecticut then catching the red eye to New Jersey all within a 24 hour period.
You are only 24 hours away from anywhere.
Most companies have dedicated staff in the cities they operate in or they are able to use the internet to complete most of their operations. But while the age of the digital office has decreased most travel opportunities it hasn't eliminated them altogether and the ones that still exist are the hardest to fill.
That's because very few people are willing to travel 1 day a month for their job much less even contemplate traveling the 270 or more days a year that some companies would love to staff.
Hello, welcome to hell.
Pros:
- Lots of money.
I once worked at a large corporation and they had this guy who had to travel twice a week to update routers and check the condition of server rooms in Los Angeles. He quit after they refused to reduce his travel time and they started to look for his replacement. They first tried to sucker someone from the team but everyone was 30 year or older, had wives and girlfriends and kids and pets, so they started looking elsewhere. The went down to the server rooms and offered junior techs the job. One of them took it but quit shortly after. They put a posting on their website and on job boards but couldn't find any takers. They then hired the sharks: headhunters. Job placement firms with zero ethics hunted the globe for someone dumb enough to take the job. And everyday the salary grew, tempting someone to take the bait. A year later the position had still not been filled even though the salary was at 99 thousand and the requirements had fallen to junior level standards.
I quit soon after that. I don't think they ever found anyone.
This is your god.
- Lots of travel.
If a company discovers you like to travel and that you travel well they will start sending you for most of their travel needs. You will become their road-warrior, dispatched to every conceivable city at any time to solve whatever problem that can't be handled remotely.
Cons:
- Little to no upward mobility.
Being away from the office makes you almost invisible and immune from the office politics necessary to work your way up the corporate ladder. You might not even meet most of your co-workers for years. This separation makes it highly unlikely that you are going to be considered for a managerial position of any type. Also, in order for you to make a transition from traveler to office worker they will have to find someone to fill that travel job you currently occupy. That isn't going to be easy or happen quickly.
- High burn out rate.
The reason that these jobs pay so well is because most people are unable to stay in motion for months or years at a time. They quit or get fired because being away from their comfort zone makes the job very stressful.
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!
So, lets begin.
Preparation:
- A burner phone
Once you put your name and number out on the job boards as someone willing to travel you are going to get a lot of phone calls from recruiters and companies. These people will continue to call you until you are no longer active in their database. That can take months. Using a disposable phone allows you to separate your calls from your private cell phone and an makes for an easy way to ditch the number when you are done. You can use your own number if you wish but keep in mind that the number of calls can exceed five a day easily. Best to have a way to turn off the annoying phone calls without impacting your own private line.
- A disposable email address
The number of contacts you are going to make through email is going to be staggering. You could potentially receive hundreds a day. A separate email address that doesn't impact your private one is usually the best. I recommend gmail because it can be accessed worldwide and has a tremendous amount of space.
- An internet connection
You are going to need access to dice.com and monster.com as well as any private job boards that contain potential jobs.
- Patients and the desire to travel
Lastly you are going to want the desire to travel. If you don't enjoy travel this job will be the worst decision you ever make. The large amounts of money will NOT make up for it and you will hate your job with a fiery passion.
Your new home!
What you will positively need:
- All of your identification.
If you can't leave home without it, or you need it to drive your car, bring it. That might include passport, drivers license, military ID card or anything else with your picture on it. When traveling out of country you will want any visas you might need to work.
- Have bag will travel.
A travel bag if you are staying less than a week or a suitcase if the stay goes longer.
- Communication.
You are going to be fairly mobile and while you might have a phone at the hotel or office the only way to stay in touch with everyone is a cell phone.
Everything you will need...skip the knife though.
What you might want to bring:
- A book or anything to read.
Avoid hardbacks and stick to paperbacks. You don't have to bring anything from your house or apartment, just pick one up at the airport and, if the flight is long enough, sell it at another bookstore when you land. The Amazon Kindle is a nice item. You can pick one up new if you have the cash lying around although used or previous version can be bought on eBay or craigslist.
- A laptop or a netbook.
You might want to work on the plane or watch movies.
- A portable music player.
- Clothes.
- The tools of your trade.
Just hang up pictures of your cat and it's just like your office on the ground!
What you can leave behind:
- Everything else.
Update your resume and put it up on dice.com and monster.com making sure to specify that your willingness to travel is 100 percent. Log onto company private job boards for positions that you want and do the same. You also want to specify in your resume that travel is not an issue. Just a quick one line sentence to that effect is very helpful. No one reads your resume until scanners or other automated web crawlers bring it to their attention so key words like 'travel' will flag you very quickly. Once you are flagged as a travel candidate you will be moved to the top of the list. It will take a few days to be updated and scanned into everyone's database, so just sit back and wait for calls.