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A gap year should be fun, as well as a really useful learning experience, but you also need to think about how your gap year could – and should – enhance your career prospects once you start looking for work.

These days, the buzz phrase in recruitment is ‘transferable skills' - skills which have been gained in one environment, which can benefit a new position you apply for. For example, if your gap year included working with people, being a team leader, having knowledge of a certain country or industry; these are all skills which you can bring with you – and which you should point out on your CV.

As a graduate, your CV can't show a great deal of work experience, but it can show aptitude and character. Take the time to think more widely about how what you've done can benefit your potential employer. You need to come across as a bright, independent, motivated person who could be of real advantage to an employer – what you've done on your gap year can help demonstrate this.

Don't forget, it's not only what you did in your gap year, but what you did with any downtime, or time between studies: editing colleges newsletters, temporary work in any environment, fund raising, taking part in any worthy cause are all examples which serve to underline with credentials; especially if you took an organisational role.

Coming back to your gap year; it's sometimes easy to forget what you did, or at least forget some of the useful aspects of it. So make a few notes during your time away just to remind yourself.

Employers are always impressed by initiative. You may not see overcoming a certain problem while you were away as CV worthy, but any achievement that can show your ability is worth it. If you were volunteering in a developing country and overcame any significant obstacles such as a lack of resources, how did you cope? Did you come up with a solution, or improvisation? Did you organise any team's work, or collaborate with local volunteers or other participants to achieve results?

The ability to communicate at all levels is also highly regarded, so think of those examples when you needed to get something across – with or without words – or even in another language. Did you need to talk with an official at a higher level, or communicate in public? How you handled any of the above are all stories worth telling in your CV.

Ideally, you could spend some of your gap year working in an industry, perhaps as an undergraduate placement. Taking a fixed term internship or work experience placement before or during your university course also has the advantage of earning you money and improving your CV.

In this case, you'll build up contacts, as well as gain an understanding of different businesses and how they work. This sort of knowledge, especially if you have worked in more than one sector, will be appreciated when you apply for jobs.

Keep these points in mind during your gap year and make a record of key events, both positive and negative, and how you responded to them. When you are applying for work, application forms and interviewers will often ask for examples of the range of competencies they are seeking, and this record will help you to remember some specifics.

Remember that planning your gap year a what you want to get out of it, shows you have thought about the direction you want to go in. This, in itself, is important to employers who want people that have a sense of continuity and forward-thinking. In conclusion.

Plan it well and it could be more than an incredible experience, standing you in good stead as you build your career.

For more information on gap years, contact STA Travel.