As mentioned in my previous blog, a resume is a selling tool that outlines what you have to offer to your future employer. The content of your resume is very important. A successful resume for a flight attendant position should include the followings:

1. Personal information such as your name, address, phone number and email. Make sure you double check your personal information!!! It is not uncommon for applicants to mistype their email address and didn’t get contacted for an interview!

2. Your career objective statement. You should state that you are interested in the flight attendant / cabin crew position (depending on how the airline calls it) with the specific airline. This statement should be very specific. An example would be: Applying for a flight attendant position with ABC airline using customer service experience and a proven ability to apply excellent communication and interpersonal skills. Something like “to pursue a career in the aviation industry” is too generic. Also, please state the airline’s name; this shows that you are not sending the same resume to all the airlines of interest!

3. Education information, including any significant academic achievements. Any job-related secondary education experience, such as completion of in-flight service courses should be listed here. Make sure you include the name of the institution, city, state and country as well as the date of completion. Education information should be listed in reverse chronological order.

4. Related work experience. Include work experiences that will have a positive impact on your application for the flight attendant position. Review the job positing and understand what skills and qualities the airline is looking for. Most airlines prefer applicants that possess customer service experience. Make sure you include any work experience that involves dealing with customers. List the position title, employer, city, state, country and dates held, again, in reverse chronological order. Related volunteering experience should also be included. I like my resume to be descriptive and personal. I like to paint a picture in the employer’s mind when they are reading my resume. For instance, to describe my experience working as a customer service representative, instead of saying “answered questions from customers”, which is plain and not descriptive, I put “resolved customer problems in a professional and courteous manner.” This simple statement tells about what I did and how I did it.

5. Other skills. If you speak other languages, make sure you list them here. Other skills such as CPR could be listed here as well.

Lastly, read it over and over and over and over and over and over …………………………

To be continued…

Related articles:
Resume for a flight attendant position - part I
Applying for a flight attendant position – choosing the right airline
Applying for a flight attendant position - cover letter
Height requirement
Commonly asked open house interview questions – individual interview
Open house dos and don’ts - part I

What is a resume?
A resume, also known as a curriculum vitae (CV), is a document containing a summary or listing of relevant job experience and education. The resume is a selling tool that outlines your skills and experiences so an employer can see, at a glance, how you can contribute to the employer’s workplace. A resume is almost a must-show when applying for a job. In the past, resumes were delivered to an employer via fax, mail or in person. Nowadays, the majority of resumes are sent through the internet, as an email or posted directly on an online resume builder.

Why send a resume?
Other than it is a required item by the recruitment team, a resume serves as a first impression on behalf of the job seeker. A resume provides a synopsis of the candidate’s job experience and education, which are the key elements recruiters look for when selecting potential candidates for interviews. By skimming through the resumes (yes, skimming through), the employer quickly filters out who seem to be less qualified than the others. Employers make snap judgments when glancing at your resume. If they see unrelated job titles or skills the likelihood is very high that they will make an immediate assumption that you are not qualified for the job you want. Adding to this problem is the fact that employers don’t have the time to read through each of your job descriptions to determine if you have the skills they need. The importance of a good quality resume cannot be overlooked.

How to write a good resume for a flight attendant position?
The content as well as the presentation of the resume both play a key role in determining whether you will be granted a interview on a future date. Your resume should accentuate your strengths related to the flight attendant position. Take a good look at the job posting from the airlines and understand what qualities they are looking for. Some of the most common qualities are good communication skills, extensive customer service experience, safety conscious, friendly, and flexible. I suggest that you read the job posting a couple of times and get an in-depth idea of what the company really looks for. Spend some time on reading the airline’s website and get a sense of the working atmosphere. Then, reflect on your previous experience: Do my previous volunteer and work experiences demonstrate the qualities this particular airline is looking for? If so, how do I best reflect these qualities on my resume so that I could get this job?

To be continued…

Related articles:
Resume for a flight attendant position - part II
Applying for a flight attendant position – choosing the right airline
Applying for a flight attendant position - cover letter
Height requirement
Commonly asked open house interview questions – individual interview
Open house dos and don’ts - part I

Height requirement:
Most airlines set height requirements to correspond with the size of the aircraft they operate. Sometimes a height minimum is specified on the posting; sometimes a height range is specified rather, usually between 5′2″ and 5′9″ tall. Why a height requirement? Too tall, and you’re bumping your head on the ceiling. Too short, you may not be able to reach the overhead compartments where the safety and emergency equipment is located, which are typically between 6′ and 6′10″ inches high.

Some airlines allow their tall flight attendants to avoid aircrafts that have lower ceilings. However, smaller airlines with limited types of aircrafts cannot offer this option to their flight attendants.

To give you an idea what airlines look for in terms of height, here are the height requirements of some United States airlines: (more…)

Each jump seat is carefully placed in the cabin so that the occupied flight attendant could perform their duties during an emergency situation, which include opening the cabin door, dispatching the slide, and directing passengers to the nearest operative emergency exit.

We also occupy the jump seat during turbulence or our unofficial crew breaks.

Jump seats usually fold up and out of the way when not in use to keep aisles, workspaces and emergency exit routes clear.

Most flight attendants, including myself, love jump seats in the galley so that we get some privacy when sitting in it. We try to stay away from jump seats in the cabin, especially the ones facing the passengers. Why? We don’t know where our eyes should land on…….

Jump seats could be occupied by non-operating crew as well. Some airlines let their traveling staff to occupy a jump seat when the cabin is full – this is known as jumpseating.

How to prevent aerotitis:

Other than performing a Valsalva’s maneuver, yawning, gentle blowing of the nose, thrusting the lower jaw forward, swallowing, or use of an inhaler will open the Eustachian tubes and thus, release the pressure in your ears. However, the best is to prevent aerotitis from happening. If you have a head cold, hay fever, or sinus infection, the back of your nose and throat could be swollen and thus blocking the Eustachian tubes. Also, excessive smoking or having an irritation in your nose, head or throat could block the Eustachian tubes. To check whether your ears are good for flying, do this pre-flight check: Take a sip of water and swallowing vigorously. If you hear clicking noises in both ears, your Eustachian tubes are clear and good for fly. Otherwise, avoid flying.

Related articles:
Blocked ears
Stay flu-free onboard

The content in your laptop matters when entering a country.

As reported by Malaysia Star, a Malaysia Airlines co-pilot who operated a flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Adelaide, Australia was convicted and fined upon arrival for bringing in child pornography.

Ahmad Said, 25, was arrested by custom officers at Adelaide’s International Airport last week, after he claimed he had nothing to declare.

Custom officers found three child sex videos named “Reped Virgin”, “10-Year Old” and “High School Students” in his laptop, which were described as “repugnant and abhorrent”.

The father of two was fined AU$6,000, and has been relieved of flying duties to facilitate an internal enquiry by the national carrier.

His lawyer told the court that Ahmad had been e-mailed the video files and had not shown them to anyone else.

“He was simply reckless, this was not material brought in to be disseminated,” lawyer Stephen Barratt had told the Adelaide court.

I am not aware that custom officers actually look at the content of your laptop; they usually just scan your laptop for explosives and stuff. I suspect Said has been investigated prior to his arrival…?

Other than Santa Claus, poop could also fall through your roof.

But this is rare.

A Calgary woman was almost killed by chucks of ice that fell through her ceiling last week. Marian Liknes, the victim of this one-in-a-million incident, claimed she was talking on the phone while a deafening blast stunned her. The huge blast was followed by chucks of ice that landed a few centimeters beside her.

(more…)

However, the very first question to yourself should be, “which airlines are available to choose from?”. You need to do some homework in order to answer this question. Nowadays, the internet is the best source of this kind of information. There are several websites with periodic flight attendant job updates. For example, http://www.cabincrew.com has a great job section that updates regularly. They put flight attendant job postings around the globe on this website. Have a good look at it and see which airlines appeal to you. Go to the specific airline website to have a better understanding of its routes, its corporate objectives, its employee benefits etc.

You will then have a list of airlines that interest you. To narrow down the list, read the following points. (more…)

Of course, this is not an authentic café latte that you would enjoy in Italy; however, this mutated version doesn’t taste bad and will do the job to soothe your stress and tiredness. If you happen to work in first class cabin and have access to high-end espresso, then you would have a closer-to-real café latte. Don’t be despair if you just have regular coffee, they still do the job.

Understand café latte
A cafe latte, literally “coffee with milk,” is espresso with steamed milk and milk foam. Because of the use of extra milk, café latte has a milkier and milder taste than regular coffee with milk. Plus, the extra milk gives the coffee a silky texture that is hard to resist. Variations of café latte have surfaced, including using different ingredients such as syrup in cold latte, regular coffee instead of espresso etc. The milk takes away the caffeine content a regular coffee would have and café latte has become popular among people who are trying to reduce their caffeine intake but still want the hype. (talking about café latte made with regular coffee here) (more…)

Whenever a recruitment campaign takes place, airlines receive thousands of applications from all over the world.  An electronic application system helps them to screen through the applications and filter out the disqualified applicants in a few seconds using the computer.  Thus, not all the applications get a chance to meet the eyes of the recruiter. These online applications contain quite a few of true or false, multiple choice type of questions, for the ease of computer screening.  This translates to not a lot of in-depth information being provided by the applicants.  Thus, supplying additional information, in the form of resume and cover letter would give you a competitive edge.

 What is a cover letter?

A cover letter is a letter that introduces the resume.  A successful cover letter results in the resume being considered.  A good cover letter for a flight attendant position should be precise, professional and accurate. (more…)