Cabin Crew Interview.

On Thursday 9th October, I headed up to Manchester ready for a job interview the next day, for one of my dream jobs - as Cabin Crew. It's something I have always wanted to do, but wanted to perform more.

When I applied for the job, I didn't expect to hear anything from them but I was invited almost immediately to attend an assessment day on 10th October. 

I travelled up to Manchester by coach, changing at Birmingham. During my wait, I treated myself to a Starbucks and bought some snacks for the longest part of my coach journey. I'm glad that I did, as our coach went up the back of a car and we had to wait while the police came out, which delayed us by a good 45/50 minutes.

Once I finally got to Manchester Airport, I then had to get a 25 minute bus to the hotel I was staying in. It was weird as I hate buses, and I was the only one on the bus! It was creepy. I finally got to my hotel and checked in to be sent to my room on the top floor - the 9th floor.

Even at night, the view from the room was beautiful, with city lights sparkling in the dark. It really was a sight that this photo below doesn't do justice of!

Once I had settled into my room and warmed up a bit, I went down to the restaurant where I had some dinner and a drink. It was strange sitting alone in a busy restaurant where everyone was in families or couples, and I thought I would feel really self conscious, but I didn't at all.

Afterwards, I went upstairs, got into bed and read my book until I fell asleep. It was so comfortable that I had a great nights sleep despite my nerves!

I woke up feeling sick with nerves, and not wanting to go to the assessment day. At least the view from my window was absolutely beautiful.

I got ready for my interview and then headed out to find my bus stop, which seemed miles away! I finally found it just in time, and jumped on the bus back to the airport. I then had to get a shuttle bus to the hotel that my interview was going to be at.

The assessment day / interview was supposed to be from 9:45am until 6pm, but I had left by 4pm. Arriving at 9:30am, every girl looked exactly the same - hair in a bun, black skirt, black or white blouse. It was strange as we all looked like clones. I expected there to be hundreds of people there, but there were only 41 of us.

We got taken into a room and had the day explained to us, before we had to do a short English Test. If we didn't pass it, we wouldn't continue to the interview stage but it was really easy. Only one girl didn't make it through, so that left 40 of us. We then had loads of time to ourselves whilst the other interviews were being conducted, so I had some lunch in the bar with a few people I had got chatting to.

The time went quite fast, considering my interview wasn't until about 3:40pm. It was a lot of waiting around but luckily, I had got talking to people and we had a laugh. We also had a presentation about the job which put me off... I'll explain why in a minute!

The interview itself went well, I think, but if I get the job (which I should find out within the next week or so), I'm not going to take it, as much as I would love to. Here's why...

As soon as you get the job, if you want to do the training, you have to pay £500 to confirm your place. The training is six weeks in Germany, and the accommodation for that is £700 without food. The training course itself is an additional £1849. That's a total of £3049 that I would have to pay up front (before January) if I got the job. How is an unemployed girl like me supposed to afford that?

On top of that, you can be based any where in the world and have to move within an hour of that airport. You have to pay £30 a month in your first year for your uniform, and you only get paid whilst the flight is in air. That means once you've landed and are ferrying passengers off the plane and new ones onboard, as well as cleaning in between, you're not being paid for it. It seems like a bit of a rip off to me.

I probably won't be offered the job anyway, but if I do, I won't be taking it for the above reasons. It's a shame as it's something that I would love to do, but I just can't afford that kind of money when I've been unemployed for so long.

Nevertheless, it was an experience, and at least I can say I tried.

Clare
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xxx