There’s no need to panic just yet but it looks like Emirates is about to slow down its massive worldwide cabin crew recruitment drive. The Dubai-based airline has held hundreds of recruitment events in cities across the globe over the last 12-months as it sought to plug a gap in its cabin crew workforce. At present, Emirates has over 80 events planned throughout March and into the start of April.
But will the cabin crew recruitment team be putting Open Day’s on ice for a while? At the very least, Emirates may well reduce the number of cities it visits after apparently selecting enough new hire cabin crew to fill the available training slots for the next few months.
In a leaked email that has been sent to select candidates, Emirates has said it is once again initiating an “On Hold” programme which is sometimes referred to as a Holding Pool. “Due to the success of our recent hiring events, our training courses are at capacity for the coming months,” the email reads.
“As a result, we have applied a temporary hold status to a selection of applications”. The email continues: “We will continue to review upcoming availabity and subject to a further validation of your application, we will endeavour to update you in a months time.”
Emirates does not say how long the hold status will last or how many candidates have been affected. The airline has also been careful on this occasion not to say to those affected that they have definitely landed the job.
The last time Emirates was forced to start placing candidates On Hold, the airline went through a massive cost-cutting programme which ultimately led to a near year-long recruitment freeze. On that occasion, many successful candidates were placed in a holding pool for months on end before eventually being told that their applications had been rescinded.
It’s not believed that this will be the case on this occasion but it’s quite a turn around from just a few months ago when the airline told staffers that it was 800 cabin crew short of its target.
At the time, Thomas Ney who is Emirates’ head of service delivery is understood to have told staff at an internal forum that recruiters were struggling to find the “right type” of candidate for the job.
As it stands, Emirates currently has six recruitment events pencilled in during April. There are Open Day’s planned in France and the Netherlands, as well as two invitation-only Assessment Day’s in Russia. More events will likely be announced in the coming days but it looks like the rate of recruitment is set for a big slowdown compared to what we’ve been used to.
The latest events, as well as a complete step-by-step recruitment guide, can be found here.
