Cruise Ship Employment: No Smooth Sailing
You have graduated from college and are not looking forward to spending the next forty years behind a desk. You are ready to travel and for some adventure, but your college loans are beginning to mount up and you need to find gainful employment. Have you considered combining your love of travel and adventure with your need for financial support by seeking cruise ship employment?
The Reality of Cruise Ship Employment
The world of cruise ship employment is not necessarily an easy one to enter. You are going to need some assistance, but be careful how you go about seeking this help. There are several crew agencies that offer to help prospective employees find work on cruise ships. Most these are reputable, but a few, especially the ones that ‘guarantee’ to find you a job, need to be examined closely. One of their tricks is to offer you a ‘money-back guarantee’ if they cannot find you a job. All you have to do is turn in to the agency five rejection letters from different cruise lines. What they do not tell you is that cruise lines receive thousands of applications and resumes and are under no obligation to send out rejection letters to the masses that they do not hire.
There are essentially two categories of cruise ship employment: those who are in charge of making the ship run smoothly and correctly and those whose main focus is keeping the guests on board happy at all times. The competition for jobs in both categories is fierce. Cruise lines hire workers from all over the world. It is not uncommon to have a cruise ship filled with employees representing over 20 different nationalities.
There Is Some Good News
The good news is that the cruise industry is growing quickly. It is estimated that by 2007 cruise ship employment opportunities will have tripled. That translates to 47,000 new jobs in the industry. Whether you are looking for a hands-on job to learn how to run a cruise ship or you are a people person and want to serve the public, there are options available to you in cruise ship employment. With a bit of careful research on the Internet and by reading about other cruise ship employees’ experiences, you can get a jump on your competition in the cruise line industry and prepare yourself to set sail.