Emirates is bringing back face-to-face cabin crew interviews for the first time since the start of the pandemic, the airline announced on Wednesday. Recruiters will be sent on a “whirlwind 30-city” world tour over the next six weeks as the Dubai-based airline seeks to hire as many as 5,000 new cabin crew over the course of 2022.
Emirates is infamous for being one of the hardest airlines in the world to land a job as cabin crew and aspiring candidates used to travel from country to country to attend in-person recruitment fairs where they would hope to impress one of the airline’s exacting hiring team.
The pandemic, however, brought an abrupt end to mass recruitment events full of strangers in crowded hotel conference rooms. But despite the lifting of physical distancing rules in many countries, Emirates won’t go entirely back to the ‘old normal’.
Instead, Emirates has developed a hybrid recruitment process that mixes online interactive elements with an in-person and face-to-face final interview for shortlisted candidates.
“While parts of the application process are done online, we always make the effort to meet our candidates in person whenever we can,” commented Abdulaziz Al Ali, the airline’s executive vice president for human resources.
“There’s no more exciting airline than Emirates for anyone interested in a flying career, and we’ve received tremendous interest since we began our recruitment drive for cabin crew in November,” Al Ali continued.
In fact, Emirates says it has so far received more than 300,000 applications since late 2021 for cabin crew positions alone. Until recently, the entire application process was completed online but shortlisted candidates will now be expected to attend a face-to-face interview.
The airline says recruiters will be travelling across Australia and the United Kingdom, as well as dozens of European cities over the coming weeks, to conduct these interviews.
In addition, recruiters will also be searching for talent in Cairo, Algiers, Tunis and Bahrain.
Cabin crew hopefuls still aren’t allowed to attend a recruitment event uninvited and must first apply online via the official Emirates recruitment website. After an initial screening, shortlisted candidates will be asked to complete an online assessment, including an English test and a virtual on-demand interview.
Having successfully passed this stage, candidates might then be invited to attend a face-to-face interview. A final hiring decision is then made in Dubai and successful candidates will receive the so-called ‘Golden Call’.
