CV mistakes that may prevent you from being shortlisted by Qatar Airways

When reviewing CVs from would-be cabin crew applicants, I came across some fatal mistakes. Please do your best to avoid these mistakes to ensure you do not get sent home after the first round.

REMEMBER that Qatar are looking for candidates who can deliver “Excellence in service” in “everything they do”. They want to know that you have the personality first to join their multicultural team. They are looking for people who have outgoing personality with good interpersonal skills and the ability to work with a multinational team.

These are the common CV mistakes:

1. You are far too focused on job duties

I come across lots of CVs with a list of job procedures, yes a boring list of duties and responsibilities. So if you are a waitress, please avoid saying, I meet guests, show them to their tables, take their orders, tell them about menu specials, check if they are enjoying their service and at the end of each evening check and reconcile the cash takings. These are boring procedures that all waitresses do but says nothing special about you. So, why would they shortlist you when there are over a hundred in the queue with the same job title and have the same duties as yourself.

It does not answer the question how did you perform this job better than your colleagues or others who have the same job title.

You did not mention what problems and challenges you faced, what you did to overcome them, the outcome and what you learnt from it.

2. A Career Objective statement or Skills

This statement is so cliche and overused. Almost everyone has the same content in this section such as I am looking for a challenging role that enables me to grow and learn etc. This is a waste of space and time.

With Skills, this gets even worse as applicants just state I am a team player, have good communication skills, have multi-cultural experience, hardworking with polite and courteous customer services. Why do you say this? It does not mean anything as the recruiter is after the evidence? Remember make a CV unique to you. If you are good team player, demonstrate it with a line or two.

3. Resume is just one page with colour borders, lots of columns and different sized fonts.

NEVER squeeze your experience and achievements onto one page, this is the greatest mistake you have made. You have read that resumes shouldn’t be longer than a page somewhere on google and recruiters have no time to read them. Both are wrong. A resume cramped onto a page is by far more difficult to read as there are often three or four columns and the information is everywhere. When preparing your CV, ask yourself if what you write will land you the interview. This is your selling document so ensure it includes items that make you different from the competition. Two pages is the norm. Please take out the colour borders and only use Arial or Times new Roman Font in size 10 or 11.

4. Do not list irrelevant information

Leave out things in your jobs that are not important for the cabin crew role.

5. Using keywords without sufficient evidence

Sprinkling keywords is a good thing but remember it has to be evidenced based. So for the Qatar cabin crew role, do not just state I have an outgoing personality and good interpersonal skills and good ability to work in a multinational team. Qatar always uses the term “FIVE STAR SERVICE”. So, a useful tip is to ensure your show an example in your CV where you have gone all out to provide that exceptional five star service. Use keywords such as the terms highlighted in bold above in your CV. However, do spread it around and each term followed with a line or two of evidence that shows you truly have these qualities!

6. Typos and grammatical errors

This is totally unforgiving, so ensure you check it again and again before you hand this in at the Open day or online.

And finally,

Finally, if English isn’t your first language, I would recommend that you take-up our professional CV writing service which will take you beyond the Assessment Day. Even if English is your first language, not many are used to writing CVs for cabin crew roles, and if this is your first cabin crew role, I would also suggest you consider getting a professional CV.

Our professional CV writing service is priced at GBP£50, and can be ordered using the button below.

Most of our clients who use our CV writing service and mock interview training get through at first attempt!
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