Do You Have What it Takes to Get Hired and Stay Hired on a Cruise Ship?
If you have decided to give up your great job on land and follow your dream of landing a job on a cruise ship, you may already have experienced how tough the industry truly is, plus you may have friends and family quietly questioning your sanity.
Instead you'd probably be working on a cruise ship right now...
perhaps getting paid to travel around exciting places like the Caribbean, the Med or the Far East! Throwing in your job can be very risky, but it does have enormous rewards - the opportunity to travel being one of the greatest.
Sure, some people send off ONE job application, land an interview and then get hired right away.
But I can assure you this is definitely not the norm! For everybody it takes a lot of persistence, effort and determination.
It takes the ability to shrug-off rejection and to pick yourself up from disappointment...
and to carry on regardless until you are offered that dream job.
My own experience of landing my first cruise ship job was FULL of rejections and lots of frustration.
And I have a ton of rejection letters I could show you from lots of cruise companies, including Disney, Carnival, RCCL and a LOT of agencies and concessionary companies.
Did I let it affect me? YES, it hurt like hell! Did I give up? Never.
The dream I had of getting paid to travel the world, visiting exotic destinations, making lots of new friends...
and just plain getting out of the rut I was in was just too strong a dream to give up on.
Giving up would have also meant that I was admitting failure and giving up on myself...
and I was FAR too proud to allow that.
Besides, I had already told my family and friends that I was going to work on a cruise ship...
and I wasn't going to allow them the satisfaction of laughing when I fell flat on my face! (There was very little ridicule when they received postcards from me with stamps on them from Barbados, Aruba, St.
Lucia, the Bahamas, Costa Rica and Mexico to name but a few)...
or phoned them from a beach in Hawaii!) Unfortunately, MOST people do not show the level of determination that's needed to get hired in the cruise industry and that's simply why they don't get the job.
In our experience, MOST people's feeble attempts at getting hired involve nothing more than firing off a few random, un-targeted resumes by email.
When they don't hear anything back within a week, they give up on the whole idea of working on a cruise ship and move onto something else.
(Perhaps in 10 or 20 years time they'll look back on what might have been an amazing adventure in their lives, had they taken it seriously?) As I'm sure you can imagine, careers at sea are unique in many aspects.
Beginning with a seven day working week, combined with the knowledge that you might have to share a cabin with another person are just a few of the truths that go along with working on cruise ships.
Could you cope with the stringent safety regulations on board? And what about the close living quarters for 6 to 8 months at a time? But once you understand what you are getting yourself into, then you must decide what cruise job will best fit your resume.
You might not be adapting your career entirely, but instead choosing a position that fits well with your current skills and experience.
You've read thus far into this article which means that you are better than "most" people and already have a good understanding of what is involved in a cruise ship career.
So, if you pick anything up from this message it's this: If you REALLY want to get a job on a cruise ship, then you need to take it SERIOUSLY and pursue it with passion, determination and persistence.
Of course, just those three attributes won't necessarily guarantee you the job...
but they'll certainly put you ahead of 97% of the competition out there and I think you'll find the end rewards worthwhile.
Instead you'd probably be working on a cruise ship right now...
perhaps getting paid to travel around exciting places like the Caribbean, the Med or the Far East! Throwing in your job can be very risky, but it does have enormous rewards - the opportunity to travel being one of the greatest.
Sure, some people send off ONE job application, land an interview and then get hired right away.
But I can assure you this is definitely not the norm! For everybody it takes a lot of persistence, effort and determination.
It takes the ability to shrug-off rejection and to pick yourself up from disappointment...
and to carry on regardless until you are offered that dream job.
My own experience of landing my first cruise ship job was FULL of rejections and lots of frustration.
And I have a ton of rejection letters I could show you from lots of cruise companies, including Disney, Carnival, RCCL and a LOT of agencies and concessionary companies.
Did I let it affect me? YES, it hurt like hell! Did I give up? Never.
The dream I had of getting paid to travel the world, visiting exotic destinations, making lots of new friends...
and just plain getting out of the rut I was in was just too strong a dream to give up on.
Giving up would have also meant that I was admitting failure and giving up on myself...
and I was FAR too proud to allow that.
Besides, I had already told my family and friends that I was going to work on a cruise ship...
and I wasn't going to allow them the satisfaction of laughing when I fell flat on my face! (There was very little ridicule when they received postcards from me with stamps on them from Barbados, Aruba, St.
Lucia, the Bahamas, Costa Rica and Mexico to name but a few)...
or phoned them from a beach in Hawaii!) Unfortunately, MOST people do not show the level of determination that's needed to get hired in the cruise industry and that's simply why they don't get the job.
In our experience, MOST people's feeble attempts at getting hired involve nothing more than firing off a few random, un-targeted resumes by email.
When they don't hear anything back within a week, they give up on the whole idea of working on a cruise ship and move onto something else.
(Perhaps in 10 or 20 years time they'll look back on what might have been an amazing adventure in their lives, had they taken it seriously?) As I'm sure you can imagine, careers at sea are unique in many aspects.
Beginning with a seven day working week, combined with the knowledge that you might have to share a cabin with another person are just a few of the truths that go along with working on cruise ships.
Could you cope with the stringent safety regulations on board? And what about the close living quarters for 6 to 8 months at a time? But once you understand what you are getting yourself into, then you must decide what cruise job will best fit your resume.
You might not be adapting your career entirely, but instead choosing a position that fits well with your current skills and experience.
You've read thus far into this article which means that you are better than "most" people and already have a good understanding of what is involved in a cruise ship career.
So, if you pick anything up from this message it's this: If you REALLY want to get a job on a cruise ship, then you need to take it SERIOUSLY and pursue it with passion, determination and persistence.
Of course, just those three attributes won't necessarily guarantee you the job...
but they'll certainly put you ahead of 97% of the competition out there and I think you'll find the end rewards worthwhile.