Expectations of a Cruise Ship Job

Of course, they realise at the outset or very soon discover that progress depends largely on effort and application. It certainly isn’t automatic. By the same token, employers are also full of expectations when taking on new employees. They obviously start off in the hope that everyone will sparkle and actually exceed expectations. In fact, we all know that this rarely turns out to be the case. It’s true that a percentage of new recruits will stand out from the crowd and catch the eye of their superiors but most will prove to be average and, unfortunately, one or two will disappoint.

The problem is that the process of cream rising to the surface and any bad apples being weeded out can only happen in real time and on no account must this impact on the customer experience. Fortunately for many employers, only a proportion of new staff are in customer facing cruise ship jobs so a bad recruitment decision can usually be invisible to the end user. An airline pilot, for example, can either fly an aeroplane or he cant. Similarly, a car assembly worker who fits a component badly will not impact on the customer because his or her work will be inspected beforehand by quality control.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, consider the pressure on the recruitment managers at the super luxury cruise line, Yachts of Seabourn. The Florida based operator aims to maintain the best levels of customer service in the world and passengers who pay premium prices for their cruising experience know what to expect in this regard.. That’s largely why they book with YoS in the first place.

Around 200 new recruits are selected every year for Seabourn’s famed academy and much of their training is carried out on the job in a real life cruising environment so there is not much margin for error. In the very unlikely event of a passenger being upset by any aspect of customer service, one wonders who walks the plank first – the crew member concerned or the manager who hired him or her in the first place !