How to optimise your CV for Emirates, Etihad and Qatar cabin crew with keywords

The Taleos HR Recruitment system used by global airlines, such as Emirates, Qatar and Etihad, help recruiters and HR staff to manage their daily responses to recruitment campaigns. On a typical day, they receive thousands of applications and it is literally impossible for HR staff to manually review and shortlist them.

The Taleos HR system designed by Oracle is able to do the heavy lifting for them by sifting through thousands of CVs. Up to 75% of CVs are actually screened out by the ATS application within Taleos. These CVs never ever appear in the searches at all and the status assigned to your initial application will never ever change. It is important to ensure that your CV is not filtered out at the early stage.

The software works through keyword and phrase recogniction. Strong candidates who pass this stage always align their CVs to most commonly used terms in cabin crew. If you invest time and study the job description or crew assessment sheets, you will learn the commonly used phrases and these should weave effortlessly into your CV.

When you use job titles, try to align your own job titles and adapt them to the cabin crew role that you are applying to. Some job titles have specific technical terms that may not be understood by ATS software and that gets rejected and binned. Remember that a job title is not verified - it is only the time you were employed by the company that is checked in the background checks performed by the company.

Don’t go overboard as over-achievers trying to stuff all the keywords under the heading “Skills” will get penalised by the ATS search engine. You need to blend the keywords with your achievements.

Please do not format your CV with tables or pictures of yourself on the top corner. ATS system cannot read tables properly - it will read and process the text in rows from left to right leading into a series of unmeaningful set of words and sentences and you will get poor ranking on your CV. This means it goes to the bottom of the pile. Let’s face it - if you are searching to purchase a product and type in a keyword on Google, would you go through 10 or more pages of Google, probably not! At best 3 pages, and you would filter from that. This is the same with CVs. If your CV does not rank in the first 3 pages of every search performed by the recruiter, then you will not get shortlisted.

Photo on the left or right hand corner of the CV - The photo itself cannot be read by the ATS software, and it list the picture in a set similar to binary code, more along several lines of gibberish text. Wait till you hear what is even worse than that. It gets added to the denominator when ranking you on the relevant keywords. When your denomintor increases without essential keywords, we only know too well - the overall relevance percentage reduces. So, given that the first stage of the CV selection is by software, do not insert your photo as it wll rank poorly. A few lucky ones may still get selected on certain days (less busy days!) but most with photos will get rejected. Sad but true.

Fancy coloured columns and text - well, again this works to your disadvantage especially with white text on dark background, the text itself will appear as white and will be seen by the ATS as what we would term “hidden text”. Hidden text is often penalised by the algorithm. We know that happens in Google, and likewise the same for ATS.

For those that make it to Long Form, your CV is again vetted by the system (2nd time round), and even if you cleared the CV at your initial application, it does not mean it will clear it again at the Long form stage. This is particularly the case if your CV just marginally made the shortlist at the initial round. This is also why some have failed the Long Form stage having passed the early CV round. When drafting your answers for your Long form and attaching your resume / CV, it is definitely worth considering updating your CV.

For applicants under 25, it is fine to target your CV with key responsbilities and daily tasks. For those in the 25-30 age group, please ensure your CV is skills based and targeted with your success and achievements. Generally speaking, the success rate for shortlisting is far higher with a skills based CV irregardless of your experience. A skills based CV always has impact.

After the Long form is ATS screened, it is also checked by the recruiter. This is the time it gets read by a human recruiter before you get invited for the Final Interview.

If you have had one or two unsuccessful attempts, we can help with a full CV review and a full CV writing service including Long Form consultation on Zoom to ensure you get a very high success rate. This also saves you time and land your dream cabin crew role far quicker than having to keep trying for many years to come.

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