Is the yachting industry right for you?

My son called me this morning influencer, and immediately after, I looked at the internet for the meaning of that new word to me.

Well, as you might know, it is a word that has been used lately by millennials, so a concept that was not within my dictionary.

For some reason, some colleagues, friends, and even family members come to me for career advice, perhaps because I have been around for quite some time and probably because I just love so much what I do that I enjoy sharing one way to be happy while we spend our lives.

Helping people gives me some sort of energy, and I enjoy doing that, but it takes time, and today’s world, time is precious. So, here I come with my guidelines and or advice on how you could start or develop within the yachting industry where I have found vast opportunities to continue developing my maritime career.

Regardless if you have any kind of maritime industry experience or not, let us start with the basics of customer service or better known as the Owner’s service.

We must always be available to serve in many ways, and those ways might vary from your duties as you will be requested to help other members of the crew with their tasks. The number of crew members on a yacht is minimal, so we rely on each other to succeed. Teamwork is paramount in this business.

As I always said to people coming to me for advice, the first thing you need is the right attitude, which is, of course, a positive one opened to feed-back and ready to give a hand to others at any time.

Then, you will need the certification as per the International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification, and Watchkeeping for Seafarers (STCW), which might change depending on the position you are seeking or the job you are qualified to perform.

Before you start applying to jobs within the industry, you must work on your yachting CV. For that, numerous web pages are offering their services, or you can use simple templates, which will help you to create your CV following the yachting criteria. The below are for your reference:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/sample-cv-captain-dimas-a-manrique-1e

Then at this stage, you are one step closer to the real stuff. Time to send your CV, time to apply to jobs, and for that, there are many crew recruitment agencies ready to help you with that process.

At this point, I want to make an emphasis on staying away from any recruitment agency requesting money from you. If they ask you for money for process fees, visas, travel tickets, letters of employment, or anything, you are most likely dealing with a scam. I have never paid a penny to any agency, and if I am not mistaken, it is also against The Maritime Labour Convention (MLC).

In most cases, you will need to create a profile for each crew recruitment agency web site. You will find this stage time consuming, but if you do a good job, it will pay off.

Once your profile is complete, you should check-in from time to time to make changes if necessary. It is particularly important to be consistent as a job might be posted by more than one agency, so if you are eligible for the role the Hiring Manager, Captain or Head of Department will get your profile and CV from different sources, and if the information is not the same, there is going to be doubts about you.

Important – only apply to jobs as per your experience and qualification. Read and understand the job requirement. It will not only help you, but you are also helping the recruitment agencies to make the right selection of candidates to be presented.

I hope this information will be helpful, especially during this time where many crew has been laid off from their jobs due to COVID 19.

I wish you all great success!

Sincerely,

Captain Dimas Manrique
Captain / Refit Project Manager