The thirteenth edition of the unique and acclaimed guide for the working traveller, which explains how to find temporary work around the world, not only in advance, but also when on the spot while travelling. It incorporates hundreds of first-hand accounts from people who have actually done the jobs, with a mass of hard factual information, which offers authoritative advice on how to find work, from selling ice cream in Cape town, to working as a film extra in Bangkok. Work Your Way Around the Worldgives information on all the main areas of temporary work, including the tourist industry, teaching English, childcare, and voluntary work, business and industry, and in addition, covers how to travel for free by land, sea and air. It also explains how to earn money by spotting some local opportunity, and gives dates and details of harvests from Denmark to New Zealand. Included is a country-by-country guide to the opportunities to be found.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. Please see:Susan Griffith
Susan Griffith is a freelance editor and writer who has specialized for more than 25 years in writing books and articles about travel, especially working and volunteering abroad. The first edition of her best known book Work Your Way Around the World was researched in 1982 mainly by listening attentively to the stories of travelers met abroad and by interviewing people summoned to the Nag’s Head (the pub behind her publisher’s office in Oxford). At that time she had plenty of personal experience of working abroad since she had left her native Canada after doing a degree in English at the University of Toronto to study at Oxford and then decided to stay on working in England.
In the early 1980s so few guidebooks about funding yourself on the road were available that travelers were grateful for any scrap of information and encouragement. The world of travel has changed dramatically since then. Working abroad has become such a mainstream idea that it has given rise to scores of web sites; student travel agencies have specialist working abroad departments and a huge infrastructure has developed for those who want to combine work and travel. Work Your Way has grown up with the travel industry and now takes account of all the shortcuts to fixing up work abroad that now exist. Personally updated every other year since its beginnings, it is now an acknowledged classic in the field. Other titles which Susan has written and regularly updates include Teaching English Abroad which gives a comprehensive account of that booming business, Taking a Gap Year, The Au Pair & Nanny's Guide to Working Abroad, and Gap Years for Grown Ups. She has also been a contributing editor to Transitions Abroad since the early days of its publication and contributes occasional articles to the travel pages of The Independent, a British daily newspaper. Her consistent aim has been to make her writing as concrete and up-to-the-minute as possible, to cut out vague generalities and meaningless waffle.
Susan has traveled relentlessly both for work and pleasure, and has spent substantial periods of time on her own in the Indian Subcontinent and the Antipodes including Papua New Guinea. She also travels widely with her family including her partner, who is the Oxford Professor of Latin and is therefore interested in travel to ancient sites around the Mediterranean. Now based in Cambridge, she is hoping that her twin sons who have hit adolescence will have imbibed a love of travel since she is all the more convinced that a spell of independent travel in wild and woolly places is a good and necessary thing.
This book is something else! Highly recommend for anyone looking for work, no matter where in the world you find yourself. Just bare in mind that finding work may be easier in some countries than others. But if you want a chance to travel the world and work…. READ THIS BOOK!!!
From Cool Tools Website, Kevin Kelly's Review 5/30/12 (http://kk.org/cooltools/work-your-way-a/ ): The endless summer It’s many a graduate’s dream — pay your way as you travel around the world. I lived the dream myself when I was younger, so I know it is possible. Since then I’ve been tracking this subject faithfully, and have read through scores of books and websites offering how-to advice on the dream. They won’t hurt, but this fantastic book — now in its 14th edition! — is really the only one that will give you much help before you leave.
Most of these kind of books are a bunch of hand-waving generalities, or out of date particulars; this one is very specific and very current. It is massively researched, with tons of incoming gossip on where the easily-gotten jobs are this year, and what to do about paperwork and visas in that particular place, and how to land the job, and what you should expect, and letters from those who just did it. It’s all very helpful, practical and inspiring. But don’t get your hopes too high. There are really only two kinds of dependable quick jobs to be found “around the world”: 1) In the service industry in Europe — working at hotels, resorts, bars, camps for other tourists; and 2) teaching English in Asia. For most kids, that’ll be enough. There are hundreds of exceptions to these two, and this book will do its best to point you to them, but they are far fewer, and more dependent on chance. But even that skill — cultivating chance — is tackled with great intelligence in this meaty book, which I can’t recommend too much.
The author Susan Griffith is very prolific and at the center of a number of other related ongoing books, also recommended. Teaching English Abroad, Your Gap Year, and Summer Jobs Worldwide.
It is extremely difficult for anyone whose mother tongue is English to starve in an inhabited place, since there are always people who will pay good money to watch you display a talent as basic as talking...
Primarily focused on tips and ideas for the UK more than the States, so a lot of things depend on being a member of the EU and the easy travel between countries that affords you. Good for getting ideas on where to do further research, but definitely not indispensable if you’re good at doing internet searches.