As you probably know, cabin crew are first and foremost safety professionals.That’s why customer service experience is non-negotiable.
Huh?
Allow me to thread the dots…
Ground School
The Real Job
The airlines job is to get new crew fit to fly according to all the regulations that govern it.
They aren’t there to teach customer service because they’ll be too busy drilling you on evacuations, decompressions, defibs and door operation.
Roughly 90% of your cabin crew training will focus on safety drills, security protocols, medical emergencies, and emergency evacuation. Only 10% is service.
Airlines invest millions in state-of-the-art training centres and it costs a fortune to train new crew. This is why no airline is going to pour their training budget in teaching new joiners all the nuances of customer service when they can get that experience on the ground for minimum wage at any coffee shop.
They expect you to arrive with customer service already handled so they can focus on what you can’t get on the ground — aviation safety and security protocols. In just a few short weeks, you have to know how to find the plastic baby in the smoke-filled cabin, evacuate an entire aircraft in under 90 seconds, and know the location of every piece of safety equipment on board.
That’s why customer service experience is absolutely non-negotiable and the recruitment process is set up to validate you have that experience.
But, that’s thinking like an airline. It’s the recruiters who validate you have this experience. So you need to shift over and think like a recruiter.
Ground School
Experience and Stories
Passengers are a feisty, frustrated, flirtatious, and frightfully complex bunch, and nobody wants you realising at 38,000 ft that you get teary-eyed during conflict.
When you enter the recruitment process, it’s the recruiter’s job to ensure you have the required range of skills and the correct disposition.
If you’ve worked in a shoe store, that says to the recruiters that you might have been eyeball to eyeball with an angry customer trying to return used sneakers.
If you’re a hairdresser, maybe you’ve had mascara streaked onto your jumper from a stranger sobbing on your shoulder.
Your background is how recruiters are assured you can handle the entitled passenger in 34b or an Ozzy Osborne Stag who thinks your ass is a call bell.
How do recruiters know which of these you will be if you have no experience?
But here’s another challenge you’ll face.
Do you have proven experience to turn into stories?
(aka: answers for behavioural interview questions.)
Without regular customer contact, your answers become hypothetical. And hypotheticals? Ugh. They translate directly to: “I have no idea.”
Hypotheticals are fine when it comes to desert island survival, but not when it comes to the core aspect of your role.
When the recruiter asks,“What is the most challenging customer you have faced? ” They don’t want to hear, “Well, I would try to see things from their point of…”
You’ve already lost them.
Now, if you say: “Once, a customer threw a pair of knickers at my head…”
Now you’ve got their attention.
Doesn’t have to be knickers. Could be a receipt, could just be a tantrum. The point is: “I had” is real. “I would” is fiction.
And when you do get a one-on-one with a recruiter, you can bet they’ll throw something at you: and it’ll be a behavioural question with follow-up probes. 90% of your final interview, and perhaps even the video interview, will ask about customer service experience.
If you really don’t have any customer service experience, you have no answers to their questions, so you will absolutely need to get some. Even if you have to accept a voluntary position at a homeless shelter to get it.
Now, don’t just get a job as a yoga receptionist and call it a day. If your only customer conflict was someone complaining the kombucha fridge is not spiritual enough, get more experience.
You need variety. You need stories about challenging customers, sad customers, overly-flirtatious customers — and not necessarily all at the same time.
An evening job in a nightclub? You’ll have a full suite of stories by closing time. And the beauty is: you can spin getting that job into a story about being proactive — someone who went out and hunted down experience on purpose.
Oh yes, they like proactive.
Now, having said all that…
Ground School
Indirect Experience
Plenty of roles aren’t technically “customer service” — but still involve customers. Interior designers, accountants, etc.
If your job involves clients or the public in any way, that’s what you highlight on your CV.
Take interior designers, for example. Not directly a customer service role. It has designer in the title, that’s the first clue. However, it can become related when you target and frame it right. The recruiter doesn’t care how you paired pistachio with slate. They want to know how you handled the client meltdown when she realised pistachio was, in fact, green.
Same goes for hair stylists. Recruiters don’t care how many blow-dries you can do in an hour or your knowledge of psoriisis, psoriasis, soriasis (ugh, point made, leave that off the resume for obvious reasons). Recruiters want to hear how you consult, listen, adapt — all while managing the emotions of someone who’s about to break down over bangs.
Whatever your job, the airline doesn’t want the label — they want the transferable skills behind the label.
Any profession can be pitched well and any can be pitched poorly.
It’s all about the frame.
Life aboard a flight is a world of chaos. Airlines want applicants who will become the Face Of The Airline. And that face? It’s going to be snapped at, seathed at, and occasionally splashed with spittle by 12 million passengers over the next 9 years. That’s a lot of faces and a lot of splashback.
Yes, 12 million passengers. Here’s your complimentary crosscheck of my claim: Airline UK S10 E19 – 13:55.
Now, remember, the recruiter sitting across from you? They might end up working with you and they want to know, can you hold your own, or do they need to hold your hand whilst you cry into a sick bag?
The bottom line.
If you don’t have stories, you won’t shine in a face-to-face with a recruiter. You’ve got to get that experience before they’ll hand you the wings. No shortcuts. No hypotheticals. No “I think I would”.
And if you have a tricky time applying through online forms but have one hell of a charismatic personality, attend an open day where you show them who you are before you have to tell them.
“I failed my cabin crew interview, can I reapply with a different email address?”
This, and variations thereof, are rapidly becoming one of the most common questions I see popping up on several cabin crew forums and social feeds. Before I say a word, I’ll let an airline do all the talking…
“Attempts to circumvent this policy may result in automatic dispositioning (aka: removal, disposal, scrapping) of future applications and could lead to indefinite restrictions from applying for the Flight Attendant role or other positions…”
Delta isn’t the only airline cracking down on this behaviour.
Remember, this is the aviation industry. Airlines don’t do loopholes and aren’t fooled by silly tricks.They crosscheck and triple check everything.
Ground School
Your're risking permanent disqualification
When you apply, you give more than an email address. You also provide your full name, your address, your photos and work history. Not to mention, you are giving a digital fingerprint, such as cookies, IP address, MAC address and other tech savvy things I’m not necessarily privy to or smart enough to verbalise.
But, here’s the bottom line:
Airlines give you a cooling off period for a reason.
They want and hope you’ll go away, for 3 or 6 or 12 months (depending on its policy), improve your candidacy, and return a better qualified applicant. Because, if you application was rejected, it’s for a reason and a new email address won’t solve that problem.
While screening social feeds this week, I stumbled on a post that read less like career advice and more like a cabin full of nervous passengers second-guessing the crew. Here it is:
“Should I make my CV ATS friendly cuz the first one wasn’t but I still pass somehow haha I’m really confused”
Ground School
Don't fix yourself into failure
I can relate to the confusion here. I’m totally scratching my head.
Let me repeat that question in simpler terms. Should I make my CV ATS-friendly? My first one wasn’t, but I still passed somehow.
In other words, the OP is asking should I tinker with a victory just to tick a box nobody asked for?
This is what happens when Old Wives’ tales start drowning out evidence of actual success.
Even when you’re already succeeding, the endless tide of online advice leans in and whispers: “No, no, no! you’re doing it all wrong!” Suddenly you’re panicking. Suddenly you’re tinkering and tweaking in a desperate attempt to avoid…what? Success?
Now, I want to point out the positives here. The poster is crosschecking and that’s great. The problem is, the chain of command is broken.
This post reads like a cabin safety drill gone wrong. It’s like asking your senior crew member to crosscheck your door, them giving you the thumbs up, then you go to the nervous sweating passenger in 32A and ask them, “Hey, can you crosscheck my door?” The answer is obvious: they’re going to panic. You’re going to panic. And the door’s still fine.
In airline recruitment, the applicant pool is full of sweating, nervous passengers, all gripping the armrests, eyes darting to the exits, convinced that the slightest mistake will send them tumbling from the cabin. They’re reading every “tip” and “rule” like its truth, panicking over checklists, all while the flight (your career) could take off perfectly fine without them ever touching the controls.
The truth is hiding in plain sight. Look at the post. Look at the results. Non-ATS-engineered CVs are passing with substance, relevance, and clarity. Substance beats buzzwords.
This over-engineering problem isn’t isolated to applications or ATS. It happens across the entire process — application photos, swimming regulations, grooming, group tasks, answering questions, scar declarations, teeth. (I’ll be writing about these, check my blog)
Everywhere you turn, there’s a myth masquerading as a rule, but tips and tricks are not rules. Myths destroy confidence and they kill dreams. Don’t fix yourself into failure.
(Or: How to Accidentally Apply for a Job Without Meaning To – bugger)
You know that innocent little button that says “Register Interest”? It turns out it’s not that innocent after all.
The wording sounds harmless, like something you’d click while sipping tea and dreaming of travel during a lockdown.
What you’re actually doing is applying.
Let me say that another way.
By registering interest, you’re giving Emirates permission to screen and process your application — immediately.
If that’s what you meant to do, woo hoo.
But if you thought you were just signing up for updates — and submitted a placeholder application — uh-oh. Evacuate evacuate and take that placeholder application with you before you get auto-rejected by the Applicant Tracking System (ATS).
A rejection here does mean a mandatory six-month wait before you can apply again, even if you only meant to register interest.
What Actually Happens When You Register Interest
You fill out the full application form.
You upload your résumé.
You submit your photographs.
And then? Your application goes on file for six weeks.
If recruitment goes live during that window, so does your application — in whatever condition you left it.
If it doesn’t go live?
No problem.
Your application is deleted.
Quietly.
Lovingly.
Without ceremony.
Can You Edit Your Submission Later?
In theory, yes. In practice, I lost edit access within an hour when my application accidentally went live — all during a “register interest” phase. Which is how I discovered this sneaky little bug in the system.
After that, your only option is to withdraw and start again.
And yes, that resets the three and six month clock.
So please, let me say it again for the applicants in the back.
Never submit a half-finished application to a live site because FOMO told you to. Not even if you swear you’ll fix it later.
But What If You Miss It?
Relax. Don’t get your knickers in a twist. Emirates recruitment is like a bus. There’s always another one coming.
And if you’re truly worried, learn to read corporate reports — the answers to your recruitment anxiety are all in there. (Dry, yes. But revealing.)
Recruitment does pause from time to time — usually for things like pandemics or, you know, global terror events — and when that happens, everyone’s application goes in the bin anyway.
