Crew Agents

As explained in the Yachting Hotspots article, there are different ways of getting a job in the yachting industry. One of them is by submitting your CV to a crew agency and hope that they have a yacht looking for someone with you skills, personality and/or experience. 


So, how does this work?

First, you have to register with the crew agent and send in your CV and a whole lot of other documents (STCW, ENG1…). A crew agent will then go over the profile you have created online and contact you if they have any questions. Sometimes they will invite you for a face-to-face interview at their office if you are near or organise a phone call. Then, if a vacancy pops up and they think you might be a suitable candidate they will contact you with some basic information about the yacht and ask you whether you are interested in being put forward. If this is the case, your CV will be forwarded to the Head of Department or Captain of the yacht. The yacht will then reach out to you and organise either a face-to-face or phone interview. 


Great, now where are these agents hiding?

Most crew agents will have an office in one of the Yachting Hotspots that you can visit in order to have a first face-to-face interview with the crew agent. However, as the industry is such a widespread one, many agents also take a more global approach and will interview you over Facetime or Whatsapp. The same goes for captains.

Below is a list of some of the bigger and more known agencies around the world. Between brackets you will see the location of their head offices. Many are based in Fort Lauderdale, Palma and Antibes so if you are near one of these places when starting out your career, make sure to register on their websites and then email them or give them a call and ask whether you can come and introduce yourself personally at the office. 

 

Yotspot – The Home of All Agents

And then there was Yotspot; a wonderful site where crew agents can advertise current vacancies and potential crew can filter these on job type, position and location. This saves you from having to go to all the different crew agency websites and monitoring them daily for new vacancies. Captains and HoDs (Head of Departments) can also post directly on this website. 

Now… there is a but. Though this site has become increasingly popular over the last few years, not all agents are using it. Agencies that seem to make good use of the platform include Silver Swan, Faststream, Dohle, Saltwater, HR Crew, Sovren, Wilson Halligan and The Crew Network, among others. This means you still have to go and check the job boards on the other individual crew agency websites as well. Also, agents that do publish jobs on yotspot regularly, might not post certain positions online as they are too confidential and prefer to look through the CVs in their own databases.

 

Final Note of Advice

Registering on all the crew agency websites is exhausting and time-consuming. You will be inputting the same data over and over again. I would recommend to start making your profiles before you arrive to a yachting hotspot as you will want to use your time to dockwalk and visit the agents in person once there. It seems mind-boggling when you first start doing it, but trust me, once you get your first job it will totally have been worth it.

Related Posts

CV / Resume

To get work, let’s get to work! Jobs don’t fall out of the sky, or they don’t generally do anyway.  Having a well-prepared CV is

Read More »

STCW & ENG1

You’ve made the big decision, have started looking at yachting related websites and facebook pages, and you keep coming across these two intriguing acronyms. Here’s

Read More »

Yachting Hotspots

Yachts move around…. No surprise there hey! Yachting revolves around two main seasons: the summer season and the winter season. For all of those joining

Read More »