One of our How to be Cabin Crew students who is now working for Emirates described her experience at the interview and the stages she passed through.

“I would like to start by thanking you for your moral support and the confidence that you transmitted me during the preparation course. Even though we were so many participants the course, we left the training feeling like we were already part of a cabin crew team. We all knew: knowledge is power!

With all my self-confidence and the information I had, I still felt very nervous the first day, at CV drop. Even if in the past I went to other interviews, some of them for other airlines, nothing prepared me for the shock that I had: 300 different persons, which shared the same dream: to catch wings and fly. My anxiety started to go away as I saw my former colleagues from the course, with which I shared my emotions all day. We all tried to be the best version of ourselves, to smile more, but still be natural; to be the best, but not so competitive…This is how it all started. After waiting in the conference room for about 45 minutes for the invitation, they presented us the way in which the CV drop will take place.

While we were waiting to drop our CV (along with a big smile), friendships started to bond. I was so sad seeing that after the first stage we remained only 121 candidates. After a few hours spent alongside people who started to be more dearly to me, we saw the results, and the names highlighted (the ones who passed) were extremely few. We were expecting to be many more, as the questions asked by the recruiters were very easy: “How are you?” and “Why cabin crew?”. Looking back, I reached the conclusion that the most important thing was our natural attitude. Among those who left after this task there were extremely beautiful girls, much more beautiful than me. On the other hand, the ones who remained were not necessarily respecting the office attire or the grooming rules.

Immediately as we saw our names on the list, the recruiters went on with the presentation of the company. I appreciated that it was a realistic one, depicting the good parts of the job, but also the bad ones. They said to us from the start: “it’s not all about glamour and luxury, cause you’ll may face situations when you’ll have to clean the toilets”.

The next day we were fewer, but the tension was still there. They divided us in 3 large groups, consisting of approximately 40 persons. After we entered the room, they divided us again in two parts and each group was supervised by a recruiter. The smallest group was again divided in small groups f 3 persons. What I can say is that I understood at this task why “knowledge is power”.

After the first group exercise, the recruiters were very friendly and they gave us the results immediately. The ones who were eliminated were the ones who lost themselves when they had to speak or they were concentrating too much on their own opinion.

At the second group exercise, it was crucial the way we interacted with each other. After the reach test, they gave us a hypothetical scenario where we were working at an agency which organized cruises and because of an error in our system 10 persons could no longer be checked-in. From a list of persons: minister of transport, a newlywed couple, a granny, a travel agent and so on, we had to choose 2 lucky persons to get a place on the cruise. While we were concentrating on finding the best solution, the recruiter was watching every single gesture, our body language and the way we were expressing ourselves. In the end, they chose some candidates for a role play session. In my opinion I think they chose the ones that didn’t had any initiative and said almost nothing, trying to give them a second chance.

Afterwards we received the English test . The first was somehow complicated, for B2 level I will say. Still, despite our emotions, all the 32 candidates passed to the final step: the final interview.

The final interview was a discussion of approximately one hour with one of the recruiters. The questions were very direct, about situations we confronted at our work place. Everything was very official, but I appreciated very much that even if the recruiter wasn’t authorized to give me an advice, she told me how my photos should look like when I will send them on email, because “ the recruiters in Dubai should see how pretty you are”. After the interview was over, she thanked me, and said that I was very “bubbly” and other words that remained in my mind and gave me goose bumps: “ I hope to see you in Dubai”.

I want to thank you very much because I know that without you I wouldn’t have known how to react to each task and wouldn’t have had the chance to show the recruiters how well prepared I was.
Kisses and hope to see you again at high altitudes!”

We thank you for the story and hope to see you among the clouds!