Resume Boost: 5 Ways to Market Your Outward Bound Experience

So you've taken a Costa Rica Outward Bound course or something similar. Now what? A lot of students wonder how they can market themselves for future jobs and/or colleges after going through an experience that distinguishes them, both personally and professionally. The difficult part is communicating the impact of a course experience and effectively transferring it to a resume or personal statement. When looking for a standout factor, employers and acceptance committees alike want to see how applicants can add value to their organizations -- so let's look at five ways you can boost your resume and market your unique Outward Bound experience.

 1. Teamwork - In terms of overused buzzwords, "teamwork" sits pretty high on the list; however, an Outward Bound course takes the otherwise subjective concept and makes it significantly less biased. Sure, working with a team to complete a project or meet a deadline is valuable, but being able to say that you literally spent 24-hours a day with a group of unknown peers to belay each other down a cascading waterfall or stay motivated to hike across an entire country awards you a lot more points in the teamwork category. Considering that many companies are shifting towards more collaborative work environments, they'll love the assurance that you can truly perform as a team player and furthermore, that you can prove it.



2. International Experience - Costa Rica Outward Bound students are immersed in a foreign culture and spend time learning a foreign language every single day. As organizations stretch their operations across borders more than ever, being able to cite specific examples of cultivating genuine cultural awareness can increase your chances of getting hired or accepted into a higher education program. All of our alumni can highlight personal interactions with Costa Rican families, what it's like to cross international borders, and how they learned enough Spanish to successfully navigate a local market -- they might not be fluent, but they can problem solve and figure out how to communicate, a beneficial skill not every candidate can claim.



3. Certifications - Many of our courses offer multiple certifications that are internationally recognized. Depending on what type of work you're looking for, being able to list these can potentially be the difference between "We'd like to offer you the job!" and "Unfortunately we're looking for someone with more experience." The Leadership Semester program is designed specifically to avoid the latter response (especially for jobs in the outdoor industry), allowing students to earn up to 7 certifications. The main point is that you should take advantage of the opportunity to beef up the "Additional Experience" section of your resume with items like CPR/AED for the Professional Rescuer or First Aid (America Red Cross). It shows that you're competent in other fields and have unique interests. *By the way, any time an acronym is used, be sure to spell out what it means in order to avoid any confusion.

4. Community Service - A lot of universities are taking a more holistic approach to their admissions criteria these days. While grades and standardized test scores still reign supreme as determining factors, well-rounded students with diverse experiences but less-than-perfect GPAs are beginning to find themselves on university campuses more consistently. All of our courses have a strong service project component that takes students into remote villages to paint local schools, build medical clinics, and install safe drinking water tanks. Be sure to mention what the specific project was, but more importantly, what you gained from it and how it applies to other areas.



5.  Leadership - Alright, this one can be tricky. How can you make it clear that your "strong leadership skills" don't get the same amount of attention as everyone else who has written a resume in the last 300 years, which is to say, very little. Being able to say that you've developed and refined your own personal leadership style during an Outward Bound course carries a lot more weight. Are you a participating leader? Maybe your approach is more democratic or perhaps you prefer to delegate? If you're a Costa Rica Outward Bound alum, think about the leadership wheel -- which direction did you identify with?

While these suggestions will hopefully build a solid foundation for starting your resume or personal statement, the most powerful way to separate yourself from other applicants is to be honest about what your Outward Bound experience meant to you. If you have a course memory that changed who you are or the way you think, don't hesitate to focus on it (requesting a letter of recommendation from instructors can also have a positive impact on your chances of landing a job). So good luck out there, students! Boost those resumes!

How the World Rafting Championship makes students cooler

Ezequiel Becerra / AFP - Getty Images

The 2011 World Rafting Championships were held in Costa Rica this year on the famous Pacuare River. Teams from 32 countries paddled the same rapids many of our students learn to guide rafts themselves. I could end this post right here and its title would already make sense, but let me explain just to make it clear.

The fact that our students get to experience the exciting world of whitewater rafting on a river deemed worthy of hosting the World Rafting Championships is equivalent to learning how to play soccer at Soccer City Stadium in South Africa (that's where the FIFA World Cup took place, just as a reminder). So maybe the sport isn't quite as popular, but needless to say, it does make our students way cooler.

The event consists of four different competition styles: the Head to Head, the Downriver, the Sprint, and most technical of all, the Slalom. All are injected with whitewater adrenaline, but by the time I made it to the river the only one remaining was the Slalom. Never have I seen such a higher density of athletes speaking foreign languages, inflatable rafts, and bulging forearm muscles in one place. The atmosphere was great, especially considering that I was watching directly from the river bank accompanied by the secondary team from Croatia - they explained the history of a sport sliding more and more into the mainstream, its significance to them as raft guides, and how judges score the complex maze of slalom gates. Below, the American team paddles through the middle section of the course (I learned that the man proudly waving the flag is the father of one of the members).

As I watched the representative teams from so many different countries impressively navigate their ways through the course, I couldn't help but be reminded of the time spent on the river with previous Leadership Semester students on the same stunning river. We would joke about how we were waiting for dinosaurs to storm their way to the water's edge because clearly this was Jurassic Park we were paddling through (naturally, anyone who didn't play along would be the first victim).

The Leadership Semester students scout a rapid on the Pacuare River

The Leadership students were on the Pacuare not to learn how to avoid Hollywood reptile encounters, however; they were on the Pacuare to learn to how to apply their Whitewater Rescue Technician (WRT) training and guide the boat through some less-than-taciturn rapids. Upon wishing my countrymen good luck in the upcoming heat, they admitted their jealousy -- the American team admitted that they were jealous of the Costa Rica Outward Bound students for getting to develop their guiding skills on such an amazing river.

If you're interested in following the current Leadership students' adventure here in Costa Rica, including their training on the river, be sure to check out the regularly posted course updates. Also keep in mind that our brand new Tropical Challenge Semester course offers the same guide training on the same river.  

Leadership Profiles: Past and Present

Spring 2011 Leadership Students - Pre-Course Shot

Planting seeds of leadership, watering them with outdoor activities, and cultivating fully grown student leaders is a crop cycle we've been refining ever since our inception. This is especially true of our Leadership Semester Course. In this post, we'll briefly discuss benefits of the course and why it might be an alternative worth looking into. Don't be fooled, however, you'll be bombarded with information and details. Only not from us, but rather from the very people who know best: the past and present Leadership students. Their shared insights should answer questions for anyone considering the Leadership Course in the future.


Roughly a year after they finished their 65-day adventure here in Costa Rica, we thought it would be interesting to catch up with some of last year's students and see what they've been up to.


Sam Duquette's story prior to visiting Costa Rica Outward Bound is analogous to many students'. As a college dropout, he was unsure of what direction to take in life and with little expectations of how the Leadership Semester Course might remedy that, his future compass now points him down a much more defined path. As a teacher's assistant in Washington, D.C., he spends his summers off working in Portland patching up Boy Scouts - his position as the head medic at the national summer camp requires him to use the skills he learned through our Wilderness First Responder training (WFR).

"...getting the job as a medic would not have been possible without the WFR certification. Besides that, when employers look at my resume and see all the certifications I have now, it does seem to sway them in a positive way. I now know that I want to have some type of career in the outdoor field and [the Leadership Course] has made finding that type of job much easier."

Having found the Wilderness Leadership and Experiential Learning (WLEE) program at Brevard College, he plans on working in the outdoors as well as utilizing his Technical Ropes: Rescue Operation Level (TRRO) certification for day trips to the climbing rock.


Choosing to pursue more recreational adventures, Lisa Purul has spent the last year doing some incredible things. After working with us as an intern for awhile, she left for New Zealand to ride in the 400-mile Enduro Cycle Challenge bike ride and hiked throughout the South Island for a month. Most recently, she's been preparing for a trip to Nepal - just your average trek up to the Everest base camp! According to her, the Leadership Course played a significant role in shaping her decisions about what she wants to do in the future and with training in a variety of fields, she most certainly feels comfortable taking care of herself in the outdoors.


Now officially part of our team, Josh and Shelly took the course in the Fall and have since returned to work as selected interns. The newest additions to the organization, they are excited to spend some time on course again, only this time as instructors. Check out what they have to say about their own experience.

After listening to Obama's recent speech about the America's Great Outdoors initiative and posting about its implications, it will be interesting to see how our students emerge, now with more potential job opportunities related to what they learn here in Costa Rica. Hopefully their preparation will give them an advantage not only in their personal lives, but in finding work as well.


With the current Leadership Course under way, we've been posting videos, photos, and updates on our Facebook page. So if you're interested in learning about what they're up to as it's happening, be sure to check it out.

What we have in common with Christopher Columbus

In the spirit of the holidays and the arrival of the New Year, let's get retrospective. And by retrospective, I'm referring specifically to the year 1492. Yeah, when Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Remember when, in his unparalleled search for the Indies, he was credited with making the unparalleled discovery of the Americas? Historians would later remark that it was a rather serendipitous finding.

We here at Costa Rica Outward Bound support serendipity, especially when it's followed by adventures. That's why last week Serendipity Adventures was on base training our instructors, providing them with information about current best practices in the field.

In order to understand the significance of their presence, let's take a gander at their credentials, shall we?

+ Rated by National Geographic Adventure magazine as one of The Best Adventure Travel Companies on Earth.

+ Listed in Outside Magazine as offering one of the 30 Greatest Trips. Ever.

+ Any one of their testimonials.

Needless to say, they've established themselves as a premier private adventure tourism company. Although they offer very different types of travel adventure activities, they have received such high accolades because, quite simply, they do some amazing work - the type of work which we respect and seek to learn from. Being resourceful, as well as having prior employee connections, we brought them here to teach our guides the same survival skills that have fostered such a renowned reputation around their own adventure travel organization.

Our already strong record just did the equivalent of an entire safety workout with the Serendipity Adventures staff as our personal trainers.

If you want to flex your wilderness first aid muscles and learn about outdoor safety, be sure to check out our Leadership Course for next year - you can get all sorts of professional outdoor certifications, including the Technical Rope Rescuer Operator  (TRRO) seen here. But don't wait for too long, they're already almost full.