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Gacia: Welcome back to the nine. Are you having a hard time finding work you really love? Maybe you are not sure what you want to be when you grow up? How about this! Go overseas. That's the message from the Berkeley based company that's helping people bridge that gap if you will between high school and college or college and career.
For more on this program, let send it over to Pam.
Hi Pam,
Pam: Hi!
Pam: Well you may have heard of people taking a gap year. There are some interesting opportunities and they are not just for kids right out of high school and I am joined this morning by Mandi Schmitt; the gap year and high school abroad director at Gooverseas.com and also Briana Pesa who completed one of these trips [via Global Experiences]. You went overseas; we'll talk to you in just a minute; thank you for joining us. Wanted to first ask you; you know for a lot of people they think it's just for somebody right out of high school but it could be out of college; it could be mid career; you are not sure what to do. A gap year; whats so great about this experience? What does it do for you?
Mandi: We tend to loosely define what gap year is or a lot of people just say its for high schoolers right out of high school. It could be for everyone trying to switch careers or learn something different and it can be up to for a year or for 5 years; it could be just five months. We just really advocate for any kind of experiential learning and going overseas is the best place to do in our opinion.
Pam: And one experience right now Australia is making it very easy and working with you guys to make it cheap to get a work visa. Why are they reaching out? What does it do for the country also?
Mandi Schmitt: So tourism Australia reached out to Gooverseas a few months ago and really want it to advocate for the working holidays visa among Americans and Canadians because for whatever reason Americans don't take as much of it gap as they should. Especially compared to Europeans; they asked us to advertise their working holidays visa so anyone between 18-30 can go to Australia; work, travel, hang out at the beach if they want for up to a year and it's just a great way to help the economy and provide all of these short terms jobs for someone coming over and learning about the country and working on some of the farms or the outback or wherever they want.
Pam: Sounds fabulous. I wish i was 30! Briana you did this but you didn't just hang out at the beach; you actually got some work experience over there. So why did you do it? What did you get out of it?
Briana Pesa: I definitely wanted some real world experience. I was struggling to get that experience in my field of interest, so why not go to Sydney and gain experience in the industry I absolutely love and get some hands on work with motivating boss?
Pam: Sounds like a great reason to go! You get to see another culture. What would you say to somebody who maybe thinking about either right after high school or college or maybe mid career; they decided to change. Maybe just little advice like why do it?
Briana Pesa: Because you get some real world experience! Its a resume builder. People will contact you more because they want to know why you went. You get a different perspective of the world. So, I think its absolutely great experience and someone should absolutely do it. No Question.
Pam: Alright. Fabulous. Gooverseas.com. Thank you both for joining us.
Mandi Schmitt: Thank you very much.
Pam: If you are interested in a heading down under; we do have some more information posted on our website Ktvu.com so you can just look for that under web links on our homepage.
