Where It Began ...

I do get this question quite a lot, and a reader just asked if I could make a post about my application process and how I got to work for Carnival ... so here it is!

I first applied for cruise ships basically as soon as I got home from living in Toronto and I applied through their websites. Never heard a thing - so gave up on that pretty quick. A few months passed and I was getting bored sitting at home and working in shops so I decided that I would try again. This time, I went looking for agencies. I had heard about how cruise lines will take employees from agencies. I found one that was free (which is always good) and I decided to apply. Lucky for me, it was also based out of Montreal which isn't far from where I live.

The agency was called Cast-a-way. I actually found them on Facebook believe it or not. Facebook - being the creepy thing that it is these days - I guess found out I was searching for cruise jobs on google and decided to put a sponsored link in my sidebar so I clicked on it. On there you can apply through an application (which I did) or send your resume to the email provided (which I also did) - I thought it couldn't hurt to do so.

I actually highlighted all of my retail stuff in my application and then ended up sending in 2 different resumes - one with all my retail experience, and one with all my theatre and television experience. Cast-a-way hires for a lot of different positions on the ship most of which include cruise staff (my job) youth staff, gift shop and spa and I had sent in my resume hoping to get a gift shop position. After I sent in my resume, I got an email about a week later asking me if I'd like to do a phone interview for cruise staff and gave me all of the time slots. I guess they liked my theatre and tv experience more than my retail! That email said that if my phone interview went well I would be invited to the one-on-one/group interview in Toronto. Lo and behold, it went well because I was invited to Toronto.

When I got to the interviews in Toronto there was probably about 25-30 people in the room for this 'group interview'. They said that they were basically in the position to hire a lll of us in the group so we all kind of had the job and unless you did something during the interview that they gave them a sour taste in their mouth we would basically be in. Instead of it being a group interview, it was more like 2 people from the Miami corporate office telling you about the job, what to expect, the guidelines so and so forth. We also did a few little improv things where they would give us a random object and we had to sell it like an informercial. Then we had our one on one interviews with the 2 gentlemen. They told us at the end of the interview that by the following Monday we should get an email about how the interview went and that we would get an email either way.

Well I got the email - and it was a success! They told me all of the stuff about my contract, what I needed to do to prepare. The kind of passport I would need (which don't worry if you're American or Canadian you don't need anything special), when I should get my medical done, how much I should expect for it to cost, what I should pack, all that kind of stuff. When I went to the interview they said they were interviewing to place people on ships around the end of August. I didn't get my ships date until my medical had been done and approved. For my job I had to go through the e-staff college (which you may have seen before in previous posts) so I had to get placed for that first before I was given my full out contract to finish out my 6 months.

That turned out to be a lot lengthier than I had thought but hopefully it answered most or any of your questions. If anybody has any other questions, feel free to post a comment and I'll try and answer them as best I can. :)

xo