As you can imagine over the years we’ve seen thousands of cruise job applications. Some great, some okay and some downright poor!

Here are the 5 of the most commons mistakes we see most job seekers making time and time again:

1) Applying for more than one position in the same application (you should only ever apply for ONE job at a time).

2) Your CV/resume is longer than 2 pages in length (lengthy resumes almost never get read because recruiters don’t have time).

3) Too much irrelevant personal data clogging up your CV/resume (for example, nobody cares that you have a ‘full driving licence’ when you’re working on a ship!).

What’s more, including personal information like ‘age’ and ‘marital status’ can actually hurt your chances in this industry, a lot more than most people realize.

4) CV/resume not targeted to the specific job that you are applying for. (Everything in your application should should back up why you are the best person for this particular job. Far too many people send ‘general’ resumes in the hope that it’ll cover them for several job possibilities. It won’t!)

5) Not following up on your cruise job applications. Here’s a quote taken from our forum this week that proves everything I’ve been saying for years:

“My friend has just been employed as Cruise Staff with Carnival. She emailed in her resume and followed up with an email every week for a month. The HR guy got back to her and said he always waits until he sees resumes come in several times, because then he knows a person is really serious and committed to landing the job.”

Simply avoiding these five most common mistakes in your cruise job applications will dramatically improve your chances of landing a job on a cruise ship.

Neil Maxwell-Keys