When it comes to applying for jobs on cruise ships, one of the most common mistakes cruise job seekers make is not following simple application instructions laid-out by cruise line companies.

Applications were received by e-mail instead of mail… without a cover letter… without a photo… with the wrong size photo… with a full-length photo… etc

This means that less than 20% of the job applicants actually got it right (and as such passed the first test!)

Shockingly, this also means that 261 hopeful cruise job seekers immediately RULED THEMSELVES OUT of the running for this vacancy all because of their failure to follow a few simple little instructions! You see, every single job application received that did not meet the above criteria was TRASHED without a second glance.

Does that sound harsh? If so, ask yourself if you would like to employ somebody who couldn’t follow the most basic of instructions.

Cruise line companies are extremely busy and receive a huge number of job applications on a weekly basis. To cope with this demand, most HR staff will have their own ‘filtering system’ like this in order keep the application pile down to a manageable amount.

I’ve seen this happen first-hand. A pile of over 200 resumes were whittled down to 30 in less than 10 minutes. Just 5 - 10 seconds were spent on each resume to determine whether it went in the trash can… or the ’second glance’ pile.

Don’t give a cruise line employer any excuse for trashing your application. Simply do what they ask you to do and follow their application instructions to-the-letter - even if it’s something seemingly irrelevant, like the size of a photograph.