Waitre d' Recruitment
Cruise Ship Jobs South Africa | Viking Cruises Recruitment Agency
Your CV is the only thing we have to go on.
Before we ever speak to you, before we hear your voice or see how you carry yourself, there is a document on our screen and a few minutes to decide whether to take it further. That is the whole of it.
And here is the thing most people get wrong. The cruise ship CVs we turn away are usually not turned away for a lack of experience. They are turned away because the CV does not tell us enough to say yes. The experience might be there. We simply cannot see it.
So this is not general career advice. This is what we actually need from a cruise ship CV, and why we need it.
A cruise ship CV is not a normal CV
If you have applied for jobs on land, you have been taught a set of rules. Some of them do not apply here.
We need a photograph. A recent colour photo, head and shoulders, smiling, in decent light. We ask for it and it forms part of that first impression. This is not a South African convention and it may feel strange, but a CV without a photo is an incomplete application to a cruise line.
We need detail, not a summary. Land-based recruiters like a tight one-page CV. We do not. We need to know what you actually did each day, in what kind of establishment, and to what standard. Two lines under a job title tells us nothing.
We do not want your salary or your reasons for leaving. Some of our clients ask for those on their own forms later. On a CV they add nothing and occasionally they do damage. Leave them out.
If you have been to sea, we want your appraisals/performance evaluations. Previous ship experience carries real weight with our clients. A good appraisal carries more and Viking requires them. Send them.
The five things that hold up applications
These are the five gaps we chase people about, week after week. Fix them and your cruise ship CV is already ahead of most of the pile.
1. Your dates. Every employer, from when to when, month and year. Start with your most recent employment and work backwards. This is the single most common gap we see. An incomplete work history stops an application dead, because our clients will ask us to explain the missing period and we will not be able to.
2. Your duties. Not the job title alone. What did you do? How many covers on a busy night? À la carte or buffet? Did you handle wine service, or take payments, or open and close the section? Write it out. If you are unsure whether something is relevant, put it in and let us decide.
3. Your photograph. Covered above, and still the thing most often missing.
4. Your references. At least two, from different companies. And please note that we verify all references. If you have only ever worked for one employer, send one company reference and one character reference — a professional person, your school, or your church is fine. Make sure the numbers work and that the person knows you may be called.
5. Your contact details. A phone number you actually answer and an email address you actually check. We have lost people simply because we could not reach them.
What goes in, section by section
Header. Your name at the top, in a larger size. Phone number, email address, town or city, and your LinkedIn profile if you have one. Then your photograph.
A short personal statement. Three or four lines on who you are and what you are looking for. Write it for the job you are applying for, rather than reusing the same paragraph everywhere. If you cannot make it specific, keep it short — a vague statement is worse than none.
Work experience. Most recent job first, working backwards. Job title, company, town, and the dates. Then the duties, properly described. This is the section our clients read first and the section that decides most applications.
Education. Most recent first. The institution, the qualification, the year you finished, and any distinctions. If you have recently finished studying and your work history is short, add relevant coursework or projects here.
Certificates and training. Anything relevant — food safety, first aid, barista training, wine courses, computer skills. Name the certificate, who issued it, and when.
If you already hold STCW safety certificates, list them. If you do not, please do not worry about it. You only need STCW once a position is confirmed, and we will tell you exactly where to go and when. Do not spend money on it before then.
Skills. A short bulleted list. Keep technical skills separate from personal ones so both are easy to read. Languages belong here, and they matter more than people think.
Send it as a PDF
Save your cruise ship CV as a PDF, not a Word document. A PDF looks the same on every screen it opens on. Word files rearrange themselves, and a CV that has fallen apart between your laptop and ours does not make the impression you intended.
Name the file properly too. Thandeka,Precious-CV.pdf is easy to find in a folder of four hundred applications. CV final final 2.docx is not.
Then check it. Spelling, grammar, consistent formatting. Ask somebody else to read it, because you will not see your own mistakes. We are not looking for perfect English — plenty of excellent crew are not first-language English speakers — but we are looking for someone who took care.
One thing we will not overlook
Everything on your CV must be true.
We check. We phone the references, and we ask questions in the interview that only somebody who has done the work can answer. A CV with invented jobs on it ends the application and closes the door permanently.
If your experience is thin, send us the real thing and let us tell you what is missing. That conversation costs you nothing and it is a great deal more useful than a lie. There is a whole article on this if you want to read more about why we are so hard on it.
Send it to us
Upload your CV through our Jobs Portal.
Applying is completely free. We do not charge candidates a fee at any stage, for anything.
We receive many hundreds of applications daily, so please understand that we come back to people when we are in a position to assist them and if they have the required experience that Viking requests. If you do not hear from us immediately, it does not mean your CV has been thrown away.
Take your time over it. Keep it updated. The half hour you spend adding your dates and writing out your duties properly is the difference between a cruise ship CV we can send forward and one we cannot.