Cabin Crew work experience- how to make this year’s count for you

 

Here we review a lot of CVs. Although some of you have unusual work experience to draw on, the majority have been doing quite similar types of jobs. So the questions you need to consider are;

• How can you make your work experience stand out when it is similar to other applicants?
• How can you make your experience seem relevant to the cabin crew role if it doesn’t seem obvious?
• How can you plan your career to make sure you have experience which does stand out from the rest?

How to make your work experience stand out

Cabin Crew applicants need to have customer service experience somewhere on their CV, as a key part of the cabin crew role is serving, helping and taking care of customers (the passengers).
Customer service experience often comes in the form of working in bars or restaurants, shops or call centres. Most applicants will list the tasks they do within that role e.g. ‘welcome diners and show them to their table’ ‘serve drinks and process payments’ ‘answer telephone enquiries’.
Although the roles may all be similar, how you perform within the role will vary, and this is often the detail which gets missed out.
So instead of listing the tasks you were required to do (which will make your CV and experience difficult to distinguish from all the rest) think about the way you went about those tasks. Make sure you detail how you performed your role, what made you better than other people doing the same job.

How to make your experience seem relevant to the Cabin Crew role

You might have concerns that your experience won’t impress the recruiters because it’s not obviously related to customer service. However, customers come in lots of different forms, so try looking again with a difference perspective. Maybe your customers are internal to your organisation i.e. the service you provide is for another team. Or perhaps the way you serve customers is through resolving their problems or providing them with a product or solution. Don’t forget the safety aspect either- this is also of interest to recruiters. So if your role was focused on security, health, wellbeing or even following specific safety related protocols, you can draw on this as evidence of your suitability to apply this is an airline environment.

How to plan your career to make sure you have the right experience

Whether you are looking for a first job or to change position its worth thinking strategically about which choice of role will move you closer to your end goal of becoming cabin crew. Apply for jobs which you know will impress recruiters because of the relevance of the tasks, environment or responsibilities. Avoid jobs which won’t contribute to your long term career plans. If you aren’t looking to change jobs before your cabin crew application, make sure you are doing all you can within your role to step up, volunteer, be proactive and broaden what you do and how you do it. The more you do, the more you will have to shout about on your CV.