Cruise Ship Jobs Blog

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.

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.