While it’s a good idea to apply to as many cruise lines as you can, your chances of finding work on a cruise ship are much greater if you really focus your efforts on applying for positions with the "Big 10", which include:
Carnival Cruise Lines
Celebrity Cruises
Costa Cruises
Crystal Cruises
Cunard Line
Holland America Line
Norwegian Cruise Line
Princess Cruises
P&O Cruises
Royal Caribbean Cruises
Here’s why:
1. They employ 85% of all the people who work on a cruise ship right now…
2. They are constantly adding bigger, better, more extravagant ships to their fleet - with many innovative facilities onboard (one even has its own Surf Park!)
3. They visit more destinations than any other cruise line (so you can get a job that pays you to visit more exciting places than you thought possible!)
4. They have the most crew working aboard each ship (so you get to meet and enjoy friendships with more people from every corner of the globe!)
5. There are more positions onboard each ship, which means there are more chances for you to get hired - and more opportunities to build a long-term career onboard.
This week several members of Work On Cruise Ships had telephone interviews for Royal Caribbean Cruises (RCCL) for various positions onboard, which included: Sports Staff, Excursion Staff, Youth Staff and a few others.
Here’s one of the tips we gave to help applicants set themselves apart from all the competition and get the job on a cruise ship.
Send a "Post-Interview" Cover letter!
After an interview with a cruise line, send the recruiter who interviewed you a "Post-Interview Cover letter" that says "thank you" for the opportunity. Restate your passion, enthusiasm, availability and interest in being hired for a job with their cruise line… and if your interview went particularly well, comment on that too in your letter.
Address your Post-Interview Cover Letter by name to the person who conducted the job interview. Keep this cover letter personal, friendly, enthusiastic and very brief (one or two paragraphs max). And while you’re at it, make sure you ask for the job!
This is a completely overlooked and incredibly effective technique that can single-handedly land you a job on a cruise ship - and I bet that not one other person interviewed by RCCL this week thought to send out a Post-Interview Cover Letter!
By sending post interview cover letters to cruise line recruiters (while your competition are sat at home with their fingers crossed, waiting and "hoping" for the call) you will have given yourself a huge advantage by separating yourself apart from every other job seeker out there and reminding the recruiter that you’re passionate about a job on a cruise ship.
And when you show so much energy for landing a job, you’re also becoming an irresistible candidate. How can a cruise line possibly resist taking a chance on hiring someone like you?
When it comes to emailing your CV / resume application for a job on a cruise ship, you need every possible advantageto ensure that it is yourjob application that gets opened and read and stands out from the crowd - because as you probably already know, the cruise line industry is one of the most intensely competitive industries in the world!
Here’s a great tip that was shared by a member of http://www.WorkOnCruiseShips.com recently that will help you to get your cruise ship job applications opened and read…
Creatively title your CV / resume document!
When emailing CV / resumes to cruise employers, most people use a title like "resume.doc" or "fullname.doc"…
This does nothing to capture attention.
Instead, use a title like…
"Jane Doe - Experienced Beauty Therapist.doc"
or
"Mike Smith - IT Specialist.doc"
Or, include the title of the ship job that you’re applying for…
"Katrina Hughes - Internet Cafe Manager.doc"
or
"Matthew Jones - Gift Shop Sales Assistant.doc"
Be creative. Think about the words that would grab the attention of a cruise line employer (in a positive way!) and then use those words in the title your resume document.
Your resume attachment will stick out from the crowd before it’s even read!
This one little tip could make a BIG difference to the success of your emailed job applications by simply getting them opened and read in the first place.
There’s no doubt, getting a job on a cruise ship can be one of the toughest types of jobs to get. If a job on a cruise ship was easy, then you would not be reading this newsletter right now - instead you’d be getting paid to cruise around exotic islands like the Caribbean, the Bahamas or perhaps the whole world - and having a blast at the same time!
Sure, some people get a job on a cruise ship at their first attempt. But amost, it can take a little bit of determination and persistence (and the right information) to get hired in this industry.
It takes the ability to shrug-off rejection
It takes the ability to pick yourself up from disappointment It takes the ability to correct your course from time to time
It takes the ability to just keep on going until you finally land the job you really want.
Unfortunately, most people do not have the determination that’s needed to get a job on a cruise ship. In our experience, most people send out a few un-focused job applications, get knocked back (or don’t hear anything back at all) and then give up on the whole idea of a job on a cruise ship.
And that’s a real shame, because this week we had a prime example of how determination and persistence really pays off in the end. One of our members has just landed her "dream job" after months and months of rejection, disappointment and frustration (not to mention total despair, at times!)
There were MANY occasions when she was close to giving up and times when she felt that her chance would NEVER come… but she still refused to give up… and as a result she has finally landed a job aboard a luxury cruise liner with one of the world’s leading onboard duty free retailers!
Sure, she knows the the lifestyle, the varied working hours and the enclosed living and work environment might sometimes be difficult and will certainly take a bit of getting used to … but she also knows it will be an amazing, life-changing adventure and she will get paid to see the world.
Her refusal to give in (long after most people would have thrown in the towel) has finally paid off!
There are plenty of websites on the internet that would have you believe that working on a cruise ship is a job for anyone and everyone.
I’m here to tell you this is simply not true… because not everybody is cut out for life aboard a cruise ship!
As a former hiring manager for several major cruise lines, I’ve interviewed many people who were brilliant at their job on land… yet, the answers they gave at the interview suggested that they could not live and work on cruise ships… so we didn’t hire them!
Many of the questions you will be asked at cruise ship interviews are geared towards finding out whether or not you would make a suitable crewmember as well as whether or not you can do the job you’re applying for.
Here are just a few typical questions taken from real-life cruise ship interviews that you will most likely be asked:
1.Could you live in a small room that you must share with one other person? (Explain why?)
2.Do you consider yourself adaptable? (offer examples)
3.Could you work away for 6 months? (why?)
4.Do you get sea sick?
5.Could you live and work in an enclosed environment that can often be difficult? (why?)
6. Could you cope with always being "on duty" whenever you’re in public areas of the ship? (why?)
7. Can you live and work within a team consisting of many different nationalities of people? (why?)
If you can answer each of these questions honestly and positively and prove that you are suitable for life at sea… then you will almost certainly give yourself a big advantage when it comes to getting hired by a cruise line company.
Save this email, print it off or make a note of those questions (you will probably not find this information anywhere else). When you’ve done that, think carefully about the answers you would give… because answering these questions correctly could literally make or break your chances of getting a job on a cruise ship that pays you to travel the world!
Your response to a letter of rejection may, incredibly, get you a job on a cruise ship!
I know that sounds a little "crazy" but listen to this…
One of our members went for an interview with a major cruise line recently… but received the dreaded Rejection Letter a week later. She was extremely disappointed by this outcome because naturally, she had her heart totally set on this opportunity.
Now at that point, a lot of people would probably tear up that letter… allow the bad news to ruin their day… and then many would probably give up on their "dream job" of cruising the world.
Not this girl!
Instead, she sat down and wrote a gracious reply straight back to the cruise line. She thanked the company for their time and reaffirmed her strong desire to work for them.
What happened?
A week later she received a phone call from the person who interviewed her. It turns out the top candidate who had been selected for the job had accepted it… but a week later had gotten cold feet about working on cruise ships and so had turned the position down…
And they now wanted her to take the job!!
What she has since discovered after speaking to them again is that she was on a shortlist with several other people… but after they received her letter, the hiring staff decided that she was the person who most deserved the job!
She’ll be spending the next 6 months getting paid to cruise all around the Caribbean and South America, having the time of her life - and she’s absolutely thrilled!
This is a great example of persistence. You can get hired in this industry if you exercise persistence and politeness… and do something that really separates you from the crowd. I guarantee that not one other candidate from that interview ever thought to reply to a rejection letter.
One of the quickest and easiest ways of getting a job on a cruise ship is to find and contact specialist hiring agents who work on behalf of cruise lines.
Often cruise line companies find it tough to cope with the huge volume of job enquiries they receive. In fact, a huge task in itself is simply going through the vast pile of emails and resumes they receive on a daily basis!
It is sometimes far easier to delegate the hiring to specialist recruitment agencies who will do all the screening, interviewing and hiring on their behalf.
Hiring agents are usually ex-crewmembers who earn a commission for each person they recruit - which generally means they actually WANT you to get hired so that they can get paid!
They also have direct contact to the HR departments of cruise lines (usually on first name terms) which means that they can present you in the best possible light. Indeed an agency can get you hired based on your personality and work ethic alone, without you even having had any prior experience.
On the other hand, applying directly to a cruise line means that you are lumped in with all the other applicants and are just another name on a very large list. It’s so easy to be overlooked and discarded without being given a proper chance.
You can find reputable cruise line hiring agencies through vigilant searches on the internet - or you can find them all in one place by going here.
Getting a good cruise ship hiring agent on your side really could be the quick and easy route to getting a job on a cruise ship !
On a slightly different note, I am starting a Priority Notification List for people who might be interested in taking the new industry recognized E-Learn Diploma course for cruise ship candidates. I have also just added the finishing touches to an exclusive new cruise jobs report- I will be sending everyone who is on this Notification list a free copy of this report within the next day or so.
We’re often asked if we know of any techniques that will ensure that your cruise ship job applications get through to the person who does the hiring at the cruise line.
This is important.
If your resume/CV does not get to the right person at the cruise line, then it probably won’t get looked at - which is why most people never get a job on a cruise ship.
There are two techniques that have been used by several of our members to secure interviews with cruise lines that I would like to share. The first works like a charm, but the downside is that it costs a couple of dollars to do. The second is a little sneaky, but has been known to work very effectively!
1. The Certified Letter - Have you ever sent a certified letter? All it requires is going to the post office, and asking to send it "certified" or "recorded". This means that the recipient of the letter must sign for it. And they almost ALWAYS do because they’re curious, and want to know what it is.
By sending it certified to the hiring manager, you’re ensuring that your letter has reached its destination - it has reached the hiring manager of the cruise line company. This is a huge benefit because the hiring manager’s mail is filtered through a number of gate keepers - and you can guarantee that your letter will be opened and read before anybody else’s!
2. The post-it note trick. At most cruise lines mail is opened by a secretary or an office assistant. This person is responsible for screening for junk mail and to weed out non-qualified candidates. Therefore, here is the trick. Take a regular Post-it note, and write something like "This one looks good! - J", and attach it to your resume. Who is "J"? Who cares! The point is that the hiring manager will get a resume with a Post-it note on it stating that it’s good which means that they will usually pay close attention to it instead of the usual quick 2-second glance.
Is it deceptive? No, it’s effective and innovative advertising.
While it’s great to write these tips in this blog and give people new ideas, techniques and inside information they can use to get cruise ship jobs. It’s also good to take a step back occasionally and look at the cruise industry as a whole, to see exactly where it’s going.
Some of you will be considering a job on a cruise ship as a genuine long-term career option, while other’s see working on a cruise ship as a one-off life experience; where you get to see a bit of the world, have fun and get paid for it - safely and in style!
Either way, it’s important to know exactly where the cruise line industry is headed so that you can make your plans accordingly. A brand new study published by Seatrade has just revealed two findings that will have profound implications for you the cruise job seeker:
1. Cruise line companies are now placing a huge emphasis on visiting new destinations, namely Europe, Asia and countries in the Pacific Ocean.
2. By 2010 there will be an estimated 20 million cruise passengers (in 2007 there were 16 million passengers)
What does this mean for crew members and job seekers?
It means that not only will there be a much greater demand for new crew members, but it means that you’ll also have the opportunity to visit a MUCH wider range of exciting destinations. When I worked on cruise ships, just a few years ago, the opportunities for getting on a ship that visited the Far East, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji etc were nowhere near as good as they are today. Believe it or not, cruising around the Caribbean 7 days a week, as glamorous as it sounds, begins to get a little boring after 3 contracts!
But now the opportunities for traveling to some seriously exciting places via cruise ship are better than they’ve ever been.
One of our WorkOnCruiseShips.com members was hired this week to work on the Statendam (Holland America Line) within the onboard gift shops. He joins his ship on April 30th and he will start his cruise ship career sailing from Hong Kong to Alaska. You can read his message in our discussion forum here.
Now that’s what working on cruise ships is all about - and he’s a very happy guy! And you could be doing this too.
These are exciting times for crew members, so if you want a job that pays you to travel to some of the most exotic destinations on earth, then as the latest research shows, there has never been a better time to get a job on a cruise ship than right now.
A proven way of becoming irresistible to any cruise line employer is to become reasonably competent in a second language. Cruise ships visit many different countries and attract passengers of all nationalities, so the demand for crewmembers with foreign language skills has never been greater.
Now before you groan in just a moment I’m going to show you exactly how anyone can become competent in a second language within a very short period of time by using specific speed learning techniques - even if you flunked languages at school, like me!
The universal language onboard is English and it’s likely to stay like this for a while yet. But the demand for crew who understand the basics in one of the following languages is increasing:
Spanish
French
German
Italian
Now "understanding the basics" of a second language, doesn’t mean being FLUENT! If you can ‘get by’ and perhaps make a foreign passengers’ life easier by assisting them in some way; whether that’s offering directions, telling them the price of an item or taking an order at the bar, then you’re an asset to a cruise line employer.
Right, here’s a quick example using what’s called a ‘Pattern Technique’. This technique alone will give you instant access to 253 really useful words:
Almost all English words that end with IC can be made into Spanish by changing IC to ICO.
English
Spanish
Plastic
Plástico
Traffic
Tráfico
Tropic
Trópico
Allergic
Alérgico
All you need to do is learn some simple rules (patterns) like this one, in order to translate English words into Spanish and you have an instant vocabulary of 1000’s of Spanish words that you didn’t realize you had.
That makes you pretty competent in my book! And there are lots of other easy-to-learn techniques like this too.
Okay, this is not a language lesson, but you get the idea. If you have even a basic understanding of a second language such as Spanish, French, Italian or German then it can put you in a very advantageous position when it comes to getting hired by a cruise line company, because having a sentence like "Spanish speaking skills" on your resume will immediately make you stand out from the vast majority of cruise ship job seekers.
We have just added a whole course to http://www.WorkOnCruiseShips.com called Speed Spanish that will make anyone a competent Spanish speaker in a very short period of time by using techniques like the one I have just shared. This course normally sells for $27.00 - but it’s completely free to members ;-0)
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Here’s one of the tips we gave to help applicants set themselves apart from all the competition and get the job on a cruise ship.
There’s no doubt, getting a job on a cruise ship can be one of the toughest types of jobs to get. If a job on a cruise ship was easy, then you would not be reading this newsletter right now - instead you’d be getting paid to cruise around exotic islands like the Caribbean, the Bahamas or perhaps the whole world - and having a blast at the same time!
There are plenty of websites on the internet that would have you believe that 
We’re often asked if we know of any techniques that will ensure that your cruise ship job applications get through to the person who does the hiring at the cruise line.
in just a moment I’m going to show you exactly how anyone can become competent in a second language within a very short period of time by using specific speed learning techniques - even if you flunked languages at school, like me!