An analysis of cabin crew job descriptions from some of the biggest airlines in the world reveals exactly what personal qualities and attributes recruiters truly value and search for in their new recruits.
For this analysis, the publicly available job descriptions for the cabin crew position with Emirates, Etihad and Qatar were sampled for examination. Further job descriptions from Flydubai, British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, Qantas and Delta Airlines were also compiled and collated in a word cloud generator powered by wordclouds.com.
The result was then manually checked and an assessment of the best cabin crew characteristics was extracted for the final product. This is a summary of the desires and needs of cabin crew recruiters from some of the biggest and most famous airlines in the aviation industry.
Here are our Top Ten qualities that should be included in your cabin crew application:
1. Customer Service
Without a doubt, this is the most highlighted quality out of all 8 job descriptions analysed.
Whether you have experience in your normal day-to-day job or you need to be a little more creative, make sure that you demonstrate how truly great you are at delivering exceptional customer service to every customer, every day.
2. Team Work
As a flight attendant, you can’t simply work on your own all the time. Your colleagues will need to trust you to work effectively in a team – to provide a fantastic experience for passengers and to ensure the safety of the aircraft and everyone onboard.
Explain what you do that makes you such a good team player. Explain specific incidents that prove your credentials.
3. Communication Skills
You’ll need to be able to communicate with a multi-national team and passengers from across the globe. Don’t just say you have “good communication skills”, prove it. Describe how you communicate with customers and team members.
Remember, a key part of communication is the art of listening and finding out what the real needs of your customers are.
4. Creating a Great Customer Experience
What’s the difference between a great customer experience and an average experience? It’s up to you to prove that you can wow customers – Think of a time where you turned a bad customer experience into a good one?
Have you ever been thanked by a customer? Or received good feedback from your colleagues or manager about the service you gave a customer?
5. Friendly & Positive
You’ll be working long shifts, often times starting and finishing your working days at unsocial hours. But no matter how you feel you need to remain friendly and positive.
Think of times in your working life where you have remained friendly and in good spirits when other mere mortals would have faded away.
6. Caring & Understanding
Your customers will have a diverse range of needs and issues. You need to demonstrate that you can understand those needs and care for all your customers.
7. Exceeds Expectations
The very best airlines in the world don’t just expect you to meet the expectations of their passengers. An airline like Emirates isn’t voted the Best Airline in the World by simply doing the bare minimum for their passengers.
How have you exceeded customer expectations in the past? What makes you able to exceed expectations as cabin crew?
8. Professional & Responsible
Cabin crew are primarily responsible for the safety of their passengers. You’ll need to show how you’ve taken on responsibility in the past and how you can be trusted to take the health and safety of your customers and colleagues seriously.
9. Dependable & Dedicated
Recruiting and training a new member of cabin crew is a time consuming and expensive process. On top of that, the airline will be putting you in 4 or 5-star hotels around the world.
They need to know that you are a trustworthy ambassador for their brand, who is dedicated to building a career with the airline.
10. Learning and Adapting
The initial 7-week training course is a tough learning curve. But the learning doesn’t just stop there. Demonstrate how you’ve pushed your boundaries in the past and are able to keep up with the constant changes in safety protocols and onboard service improvements.
Other qualities that should definitely be included in your resume include:
- Genuine
- Confident
- Takes care of appearance and presentation
- Global / Multinational
- Punctual
- Anticipating the needs of customers and team members
Some airlines have very specific qualities that they are searching for and these have been highlighted below:
Emirates
- Positive attitude
- Confidence
- Flexibility
- Maturity
- A friendly disposition
- A genuine passion to help others
- Uphold the values of Emirates: Professional, Empathetic, Progressive, Visionary, and Cosmopolitan
Etihad
- Exceed customer expectations
- Deliver a great service 100% of the time
- Uphold the Etihad values: Cultured, Considerate, Warm and Generous.
These qualities have been extracted from the publicly available job descriptions across 8 leading airlines. However, recruiters can programme their Applicant Tracking System (ATS) for their own specific set of requirements and qualities that are not available for public scrutiny.
