What does your cruise ship resume say about you?  Are you sending out applications and not getting any responses?  Your resume should get you a job interview.  If it’s not, then it is not an effective career tool.

The main purpose of the resume is to make someone notice you.  You want to stand out from the crowd of other applicants.  It doesn’t matter how qualified you are, how great of a personality you have, or that you think you are the best person for the job.  If you can’t promote yourself on paper, you won’t get an interview.

For starters, does your resume fully represent your past experience? This doesn’t mean listing every single job that you’ve had since you were old enough to work, that’s just boring!  Instead, you want to expand heavily on jobs that have relevance to the cruise job that you are applying for.

Make sure you list the skills that benefit the employer rather than just regurgitating a list of job descriptions.  Identifying your accomplishments with specifics is important in capturing the attention of the hiring manager.  You want to explain your on-the-job-performances and how they relate to your future cruise job.

The reader should have a clear idea of who you are and why you are the best person for the job. Apart from being easy on the eyes with appropriate fonts, bullets, white space and nothing too distracting, your resume should read well, too.

This means your cruise ship resume should flow well, not be boring or repetitive, and offer exciting info about you.  Your personality and energy needs to shine through the resume enough for the hiring manager to want to call you.

The bottom line is that your resume should prompt the hiring manager into calling you.  If you haven’t been offered an interview yet, chances are it’s your resume and not you.