Wondering what transferable skills you may already have to enter the yachting industry? This blog runs through 6 of the best transferable skills you could add to your CV to help in getting a job on a Superyacht. 

Some of the best transferable skills come from the Hospitality Industry, Babysitting and Childcare, Health and Wellness, Tradesman, Cooking and Watersports/Boat handling.

#1 Hospitality Experience

If you have worked in a cafe, restaurant, bar, hotel or any other hospitality industry this is a great edition to your CV. This experience is essential for service stews onboard however you need to set yourself apart and add in all the details such as what kind of service was it, how many patrons, did you perform solo drinks service, did you serve at any large events, are you familiar with food and wine pairing.

When you are working in customer service you should give some thought as to what worked and what didn’t, and collect some of your short explanations of the highs of your own experience. Too often I see green crew leaving valuable transferable skills off their CVs. In the Yachting toolkit you will find over 20 pages of information on questions you need to ask yourself to pull out the transferable skills from industries which can be linked to yachting as well as explaining job descriptions onboard and ways to enhance your salary. Such as Wine certifications for stews, working in five star establishments and silver service trained or advanced medical training.

#2 Babysitting/Childcare

This is an essential and often overlooked skill many aspiring yacht crew members have without thinking to add it. Did you do babysitting? Did you look after younger family members? It’s something which does not need to be qualified unless applying for nannying positions and can be really appealing to vessels which are family runtime environments. If you’ve got it add it!

#3 Health And Wellness

Charter Yachts try and offer a diverse crew to guests in order to make their experience onboard a memorable one. Deep tissue Massages? Yoga on the aft deck? PT session in the gym onboard?  Write how you are a multi-skilled person who is ready to bring their XXX skills to the industry in order to provide a luxury onboard experience.   However you need to understand you wont just be a masseuse or PT onboard. After all, there isn’t enough space for a yacht to employ someone only as a wellness crew – you’ll also have to perform duties as a stewardess, deckhand or chef.  Other transferable skills from health and wellness could be when you managed your own bookings and clients… you have above-average communication skills. Highlight your experience dealing with a wide range of people in sometimes challenging conditions, your commitment to making their experience the best it can be. 

#4 Tradesman

The ‘tradie’ as us Australian’s like to say. This is a valuable skill for the deckhand and engineering department onboard.  Maybe you worked in carpentry, as an electrician or a plumber? Your work history in these trades will be valuable to captains and owners, so think about the situations you’ve encountered and the problems you’ve solved. Show that you have skills to fix equipment, and knowledge of different systems and tools. Often when you’re at sea you have to be imaginative and use the resources that you have onboard to fix an issue.  Try and integrate this into your yachting CV demonstrating how you’re a responsive, imaginative, and adaptable customer service provider. As it all comes down to the service.

#5 Cooking

It is so impressive on your CV if someone mentions Michelin-starred restaurants. If you are a trained chef you are well on your way to working on superyachts however Yacht guests expect the very best; so be prepared to convince your interviewer that you understand this and that you can deliver on your promise. Also valuable to know that you need to be adaptable to different situations (rough sea states) and can work under pressure. There’s also the opportunity on smaller yachts to work as a sole stew/cook or a cook making the food for the crew, at the very least you must have a thorough knowledge of food safety, storage, hygiene standards and nutrition. As often there are different dietary requirements and you will need to juggle cooking with other tasks around the boat on smaller vessels.

#6 Watersports and/or Boating Experience

From a lifeguard, to swimming teacher, kitesurfing, surfing, wakeboarding instructor, diving or maybe you have experience in handling smaller boats. All such valuable skills for deckhands, think about it the deckhands are half the time cleaning the vessel keeping it looking brand new and half the time making sure the guests are safe on the water, experiencing all the amazing things the ocean has to offer- through use of many toys liek the seabobs, jet skis, wakebaords and dive equipment. 

So there we have 6 different industries which can be used as transferable skills to gain entry level position onto superyachts.  All i ask is that when you do your yachting CV don’t be boring you need to sit back and think about what your experience gave you and what skills you need to work onboard… wether that’s by using my CV toolkit or going down a rabbit hole on Google, Just figure out how to make your experience work for you int he best possible way. 

I invite you to check out the newly released Yachting CV Toolkit which gives you everything you need to transform your land based cv to a stand out yachting one. A fast-track to creating a yachting approved cv with 3 different CV templates, copy prompts, power words to make your CV exciting to read, how to take the perfect cv headshot,  apply past work experience and the secret personal profile formula which has given me proven success to working on some of the worlds most renown superyachts. A lot of love and energy went into this one as I see so many green crew members making mistakes which can send their CV straight to the shredder and… that makes me sad!