So, you’re feeling the decision of the skies, too, do you? I’m completely happy to assist!

Getting employed as a flight attendant is hard, however I bought via it and so are you able to. I’ll move on the perfect suggestions shared with me and the perfect suggestions from my very own expertise, which was not way back (2019). I’ll additionally present you a duplicate of the quilt letter that gained me the call-back. This manner when airways are hiring once more, you’ll be in.

My private story of how I needed to attempt twice is on the finish. I’ll spill all of it from my first failed software to the fearful pee take a look at.

However, a very powerful stuff first: the ideas.

It Can Take a Few Tries

If you wish to be a flight attendant, hold making an attempt. Additionally, don’t restrict your self by making use of to only one airline.

Flight attendants at nearly all airways get “inter-airline journey advantages.” Do you know what meaning?! Meaning as a flight attendant at one firm, you’ll be able to fly standby on different airways, too! It is going to simply be decrease precedence than their workers, and presumably have a small payment.

So, when you’re courting a specific airline for its locations, don’t fear. You’ll nonetheless get discounted or free entry to all the wonderful locations, you lovely free spirit!

Cowl Letter

Whenever you see that an airline is hiring, apply as quickly as attainable. The applying window will shut quickly and there’s no understanding when openings will come once more. Your cowl letter is vital! A duplicate of the one I submitted is under. It bought me a call-back to the video interview.

Some suggestions:

• Point out honest the reason why you need to work for the actual airline.
• Handle the commonest causes flight attendants stop or get fired. Converse to these issues and present why that individual won’t ever be you.
• Search for the core values of the corporate as posted on their web site. Then, inform tales of true occasions in your life while you demonstrated these values. Use their phrases for the qualities you possess.
• The identify of the file itself could also be the very first thing the airline sees in an digital software. It undoubtedly is in an electronic mail. So, make the quilt letter’s file identify personalised. Whenever you save your cowl letter and resume, make the file identify:

your identify

the appropriate airline’s identify

and the place you might be making use of for.

e.g., “Samson Smith — Frontier Airways — Flight Attendant Cowl letter”

Video Interview

They may ask you to submit a video interview. Do these items:

• Put the online cam lens on the stage of your eyes.
• Smile! Smile the entire time, or as a lot as attainable. Be relaxed. You’re demonstrating how you’ll look to boarding prospects.
• Don’t have interruptions within the closing video you submit. If you need to yell at a member of the family in the midst of your video, attempt once more.
• Do observe the corporate’s directions, like “gown professionally.”
• Get your self the perfect lighting and quietest house attainable for the video.

The In-Individual Interview Suggestions I Acquired (One thing will need to have labored…)

I used to be fortunate sufficient to speak to a few long-time workers at my airline of selection earlier than making use of. Their suggestions certain labored for me! After my experiences truly being a flight attendant, I’m even additional satisfied how right they had been.

1. Seniority is all the pieces on this profession. You need your rent date to be the soonest date attainable. As such, your availability date to begin working is “instantly.” Even when you need to depart a present job with lower than two weeks’ discover, accomplish that. Do it to get into aviation and to get your self the earliest attainable rent date.

• Seniority will decide whether or not you catch standby flights for the remainder of your life.
• It is going to have an effect on what journeys you get to… or need to… work, once more, for the remainder of your profession.
• It is going to have an effect on when, if ever, you get primarily based in your metropolis of selection!
• When a furlough comes (and it’s a when not an if), lay-offs are seniority-based. The extra senior you might be, the much less doubtless it’s you’ll be laid off.

2. Your smile is vital! Your smile, nay, you, will set the tone for each passenger on each flight. Thus,

• Smile whilst you discuss on the cellphone to an interviewer. It brightens your voice and so they can hear it.
• Smile on the interview as a lot as you’ll be able to.
• Smile when you’re studying the pattern announcement that they may ask you to learn at an interview . Once more, it makes your voice brighter.
• Smile, smile, smile.

3. You might get an interview query like this. “It’s time for the following hourly beverage cart service on a really lengthy, in a single day flight. Your co-worker tells you, ‘Let’s skip this one. It doesn’t matter, everyone seems to be asleep. They passengers are drained. I’m drained. And, there aren’t any supervisors. Nobody will know.’ What do you do?”

The reply ought to be one thing like this:

With out beginning a battle and most actually with out making a scene, you get up for the corporate’s service requirements. If the co-worker nonetheless is not going to help you after your heat encouragement, effectively, you, a beautiful future flight attendant, would nonetheless ensure that the passengers get the hourly service they paid for, at all times holding security prime precedence! (Taking the beverage cart alone will be thought-about a security hazard, and also you wouldn’t need to go on the market if the co-worker was asking you to skip a service as a result of the captain known as extreme turbulence).

4. A fantastic concern of the hiring managers is whether or not you’ll stick via the lengthy, robust coaching. Whether or not it is possible for you to to succeed if you’re relocated to a base that’s not your selection. Whether or not it is possible for you to to stay out the job’s life-style. Due to this fact:

• You might want to say and present to them that you’re completely ready and excited to maneuver wherever, to any base, to get this job.
• They might ask if your loved ones helps you. If in case you have a cherished one who isn’t supportive of this profession change, don’t say so. As an alternative, emphasize the household and associates who will help you. They know you’ll want it when you make this troublesome transition to your dream job.
• Discuss (and present) your versatile, energetic persona. You’ll undoubtedly should be versatile and constructive when this profession throws you its curve balls! I’m speaking delayed flights, getting dream locations pulled out from below you, working via Christmas…

Bonus Tip

Watch YouTube movies on what to anticipate on the interviews and about what the job is absolutely like. But, essentially the most helpful insights I bought had been from googling, “Why I stop flight attending.”

What Airline to Work For? Issues

Whenever you’re choosing an airline to work for, listed below are some prime issues to contemplate.

1. Pay. It’s fairly simple to google who pays how a lot.

2. Routes. How does the airline construction their routes? Do you want that? The place do they fly? Do you need to go to these locations?

3. Bases. Does the corporate have bases in cities that you just like? Bases change into the commonest locations in your work life. They decide the place you reside and/or commute. If the town you reside in isn’t among the many bases, have they got a base that will be simple so that you can commute to utilizing standby advantages or a automobile? (For instance, do they fly there a number of occasions a day? Would you be capable of drive your self to work in a pinch, even when it’s a few hours’ drive?)

4. However pay, routes, and bases aren’t all the pieces. Look into firm tradition. The flight attendants who work for Alaska and Southwest are likely to have fierce and clear loyalty to their employers. The corporate cultures there are simply that good, I assume! Delta is thought for having a ton of former fighter pilots. Emirates regulates your private life to an extent uncomfortable for a lot of Westerners.

My Story

The first time I attempted to change into a flight attendant I used to be 21. I didn’t make the reduce.

It’s true that ‘flight attendant’ is likely one of the hardest jobs on the earth to get. CNBC reports that it’s more durable to get into Delta Airways’ flight attendant academy than into Harvard. However for me, in hindsight, I consider I failed the primary time as a result of I used to be not but self-possessed sufficient.

You might want to be self-possessed on this job for lots of causes. You’re being employed to handle individuals in an emergency. You’re additionally going to be the eyes and ears out to catch any terrorist or different usually prison chicanery. You’ll be in command of corralling your self up in any respect hours of the morning and night time. Your life-style shall be about getting your self to your gate on time. Additional, you’re going to have to assist or empathetically stand as much as unruly vacationers when they’re at their most drained, burdened, and confused. In the way in which you carry your self, you need to present you’ve bought the power to do all this.

The second time I utilized to change into a flight attendant, I used to be 25. That point, I bought invited to The Interview. Typically the airline isn’t prepared for you; generally you simply weren’t but prepared for the airline.

The day I bought the excellent news, I bear in mind standing in a daze in my outdated house, staring out the third-story window. I felt like one admitted to the ready space in entrance of the pearly gates.

The Interview, or, These Who Made it and These Who Didn’t

The corporate flew me from my hometown to Houston for the interview. After I unpacked within the resort room, I found I had left behind my new make-up.

Skilled presentation — make-up — is a giant deal, a giant a part of wanting the half and ‘making it’ on this job. So, I charmed, pressed, begged, and finally bribed the resort shuttle driver to take me to a make-up retailer that night time. How humorous that will need to have appeared to him! Oh, the determined state some girls enter to have their make-up! However it was necessary to me to move the interview. I didn’t need any element in my management to be tousled.

The following morning, there was a fellow job candidate within the shuttle van. She was getting back from her job interview on my means into the hiring workplace. The shuttle had an airport cease so she might get dwelling.

She appeared to me good for the job, absolutely “in.” Intelligence shined in her eyes. She was well-presented, great-looking, and well-mannered. But she was nonetheless as wound-up popping out of the interview as I used to be getting into. Beneath the marvelous make-up, her expression was tense. Clenched arms rested on her wonderful enterprise apparel.

“Did you get a proposal?” I requested.

“They instructed me they may contact me and let me know.”

“I’m certain you bought it,” I mentioned and meant it. However I by no means noticed her afterward in coaching or ‘on the road,’ what they name being truly at work as an FA after coaching.

There actually is a thriller, a chunk of fortune, or likelihood, to why one individual does and one other doesn’t get the supply. Sure, you need to be manufactured from the appropriate stuff. Sure, you need to attempt your finest. However finally there’s nonetheless some fortune and likelihood concerned with getting this job. Individuals ought to know that. Don’t take it too onerous when you don’t make it in.

I noticed the identical phenomenon half a 12 months later. An earnest resort workers member approached me whereas I ate lunch in his foyer on a layover. He requested my recommendation for turning into a flight attendant. He needed to be one badly; that’s half the job requirement proper there. However he was additionally polished, assured, and good at customer support. He even spoke two languages. I adopted up with him on textual content message about his software over time, sending encouragement, till lastly our communication got here to an finish together with his crushing information: he didn’t get accepted.

It blew my thoughts.

After I misplaced my flight attendant job to Covid-19 lower than a 12 months later, I remembered him once more. I questioned if not directly, the universe had protected him from unemployment in 2020 by denying him his dream.

At my interview, we started by sitting all collectively in a room and watching a presentation.

Then we waited in an workplace togehter whereas one after the other we had been pulled out and interviewed one-on-one. These of us left behind joked about how possibly They had been listening to our dialog of their absence and this, too, was a part of our interview.

My time got here. I used to be giddy with nerves, nevertheless it appeared to go effectively. My interview concerned studying aloud an airplane announcement on the intercom, one thing I actually take pleasure in.

They supplied me a job on the spot. Then, they escorted me ahead to the workplaces the place you signal a bunch of papers to simply accept the place. You submit your self to an instantaneous drug take a look at.

I discovered from my interview group afterward that one candidate from our quantity didn’t make it. It was a person who had labored for years as a gate agent. He appeared brimming with the appropriate qualities. He was the one who mentioned within the group-talk interview half he had stop his outdated job already.

They instructed a few different candidates they’d contact them later with a hiring determination. This have to be what occurred with the girl I met on the shuttle in.

However they employed most of us on the in-person interview on the spot.

So sure, as I discussed, I instantly needed to go take the drug take a look at. You’ll have heard that when you eat poppy seeds, you’ll fail a urine take a look at… a minimum of, I had. Thanks, Seinfeld. And guess what: I had eaten a poppy seed muffin simply days earlier than this, this, top-of-the-line moments of my life (receiving the flight attendant job supply!).

I instructed them my concern and so they assured me that the drug take a look at is extra refined these days. It have to be true as a result of glad to say, it was advantageous!

However nonetheless, possibly save your self the panic and choose the espresso cake for a pair weeks beforehand, not like me.

Subsequent within the journey, I must full 6 weeks of coaching in Texas, then re-locate to San Francisco, my first base…

Wrapping Up

That is all only one individual’s expertise, and it was on the particular time within the firm’s life at which I utilized.

I actually, really need to emphasize this. If you happen to don’t get known as to any of the following levels of the flight attendant software course of, it’s no motive to beat your self up. That’s why I included every of the spectacular individuals I met who didn’t make it, as a result of it simply doesn’t make any sense to me. It shouldn’t to you or to them both. As a result of it’s nuts!

The factor is, being a flight attendant is insanely aggressive. Making it to the video interview or making it to the in-person interview are every an enormous accomplishment. It doesn’t matter who the hiring managers are pressured to (maybe arbitrarily) choose from amongst quite a lot of excellent candidates.

Might the following pointers aid you in your journey; better of luck to you; and, might you get your wings!