Just over a week ago, Emirates took us by surprise when it suddenly reopened cabin crew recruitment via the airline’s official careers website. For those in the know, it didn’t take long for word to spread – via this website of course, as well as other forums and social media. But it looks like there were still plenty of people who were still in the dark – until yesterday that is.
For the first time in well over a year, Emirates advertised the news that it had restarted cabin crew recruitment via its popular social media channels. In 2016, Emirates became the first airline in the world to reach one million Instagram followers and that figure now stands at 2.8 million. On Facebook, the official Emirates page has over nine million Likes!
The reaction probably even took emirates by surprise – so popular was the careers website that it briefly crashed on Sunday afternoon. For a short time, there was even concern Emirates had abruptly halted the application process although this turned out to be untrue.
The original post on Instagram has now been liked over 67,000 times. On Facebook, over 20,000 people have reacted to the short message which read…
“We’re looking to expand our cabin crew team. If you’re passionate about delivering an award-winning customer service experience while discovering the world’s most exciting destinations then we’d like to hear from you. Apply today.”
It’s certainly short and sweet but the language has been very carefully chosen. Notice how Emirates doesn’t say its actually recruiting cabin crew, just that they are “looking to expand” – almost as if they haven’t quite made up their mind. Nor does the text give any indication of how many crew they want to recruit, when those who are hired might start or the big question, when will recruitment close?
However, we have on good authority that Emirates has locked in May as the first month that ab initio training courses will begin for new cabin crew. It’s likely that the first to enter the famous training college will be candidates who were previously put ‘on hold’ just before recruitment was frozen in late 2016.
The new recruitment campaign has been dogged with a number of minor technical issues. Emirates has moved over to a new hiring process with candidates now expected to take part in an on-demand digital interview. While most applicants haven’t had any issues, some are finding bugs in the system that prevent them from submitting their applications.
At the moment, we haven’t heard any official word from Emirates about what its doing to iron out these kinks but this is a new system so some problems are to be expected at the start. Again, we’ve reached out to Emirates to get clarity on some of the questions raised above – if Emirates responds, we’ll be sure to update you all first.
