There are many things that cruise ship jobs are and are not, and most of the notions we believe come from rumours or stories passed between friends and family. Some of these might be true, and some not. Let’s look at the top five myths about working on a cruise line.

1. Working on a cruise line is quick, easy money

While it is true that employees on a cruise ship receive higher pay than those in land-based jobs, the pay does not come easy. In general, you are paid for the entire length of your contract, but not during your months off. And labour laws require cruise companies to ensure that each employee gets a minimum number of days off. Contracts vary between six and eight months, with full-time contracts ending with about two months off. For many on the lower rung, seasonal contracts apply, and getting called back is dependent on how soon a vacancy opens up. It’s generally a smooth, regular rotation, but in no instance should you take it lightly.

2. Life on board is a constant party

It is easy to see why so many are drawn to the attraction of cruise ship life – social media posts and engaging stories from working friends and family can make it seem like a hell of a ride. But there’s a lot of work involved. Crew have their own bars with alcohol and food at reduced rates, and also take every opportunity to enjoy their time off in port, but they work very hard when they need to show up for duty.

3. Cruise ship jobs are just regular jobs at sea

It is true that nearly every hospitality job imaginable on land is also up for grabs at sea. What you must remember, however, is that it is only natural for cruise companies to want to be able to accommodate the economically optimum number of crew to guests allowed by law. So while all your friends back home enjoy eight or nine hour work days, depending on which department you are in, your shift might stagger throughout the day and could last between 10-12 hours. You also work seven days a week.

4. You should avoid cruise ship jobs if you get seasick

Cruise ships are not the heaving hunks of metal you see on choppy seas in the movies. Most cruise lines choose to visit regions and ports of call during the best weather conditions there, so it’s quite unlikely that you might hit a storm. Even so, most ships are fitted with stabilisers which help ensure smooth sailing, and most of the time you might not even know the ship is moving. If at all you do feel slightly ill, medication for seasickness is easily available over the counter at the cruise pharmacy. So it’s no reason at all to avoid pursuing your passion on board!

5. You are out of touch with your friends and family for months at a time

This really only depends on you. Most cruise ships today offer on board internet. While this can be a little expensive, it is important to note that cruise lines touch port very often, unless it is a transatlantic voyage, which is rare. This means, you can top up your phone card or visit an internet café during your time off work to telephone the people you love, send mail or even couriers, and perhaps video call too. When in port and connected to the internet, you can still make everyone jealous of your job that pays you to travel to exotic places with picture postcard updates on your favourite social media!

Classic recipes have developed over hundreds of years, originating from wood-burning or coal-fired kitchens, where cooking on an open flame was the norm. It’s hard to remain true to that taste without a fire licking the bottom of the cooking vessel – or even the food. But on cruise ships, this is simply not possible.

On a majority of cruise lines, health and safety laws ban open flames in kitchens, with the exception of crème brulée torches, although even these can only be used in certain areas of the galley next to the fire extinguisher. Like other cruise ship jobs, being a chef on board calls for strict adherence to safety rules as well as compensation for these drawbacks in other ways. So chefs often adapt recipes to electric-powered induction heat sources.

Compared to electric stoves, gas stoves typically respond more precisely to temperature adjustments and obviously heat instantly. To keep up with the numbers on board, using gas stoves would be ideal. Instead, cruise ship chefs now ensure they accurately calculate how early to put a pan on the electric stove to heat up, and what dial position on the hob offers the heat closest to what they’re looking for.

Even barbecue sets are now available in electric versions so on board menus do include this classic summer option. Today, liquid smoke – some even with hickory flavour – offers a safe, consistent and quick option to firing up an open pit. While there’s nothing quite like low and slow cooking with real wood smoke, cruise ship chefs can get away with a few cheats while still serving guests what they want.

It’s hard to broil a meal in an electric oven so chefs often miss out on that beautiful unevenness that lends itself to the dish. However, electric stoves and ovens are easy to clean, which is essential in a cruise ship galley, and also offer an even surface which are more stable for pots and pans compared to stoves with coil-elements.

Both types of stoves have their pros and cons, but with the option of only electric stoves, cruise ship chefs often come up with innovative ways to make sure their guests don’t miss out on everything nice.

The world is full of beautiful places, yet virginal sands and azure seas have long been an enticing attraction for cruise liners. Cruise chef jobs can call for seemingly endless, hard days behind a kitchen platform, but no other industry provides as much travel as cruising does.

The modern cruise industry kicked off in the 1960s when cruise liners offered ‘fun ships’ to the Caribbean for vacationers. Ever since, the area has continued to draw sailing holidaymakers and along with it the crew that makes the cruise ship their home.

In the Caribbean, there are a host of islands, each one as exquisite as the next. Aruba, Barbados and the Cayman Islands are common on itineraries. Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas and the Virgin Islands see a constant stream of tourists. Popular ports in the Caribbean include Nassau and CocoCay in the Bahamas, Belize City in Belize and Cozumel in Mexico.

When not working, cruise ship chefs can enjoy basking in the warm tropical waters, an excellent array of local fare and adventure sports activities. Most guests prefer to take a trip inland and see the sights, thereby skipping lunch on board, which gives some crew a bit of free time.

In North America, Alaska is a popular destination for cruise ships. Thanks to its jaw-dropping scenery, raw natural beauty and icy glaciers, the region boasts excellent photo opportunities despite the cold. Juneau, Victoria on Vancouver Island, Glacier Bay and Tracy Arm Fjord are marvellous spots to spend a day off when at work.

Cold cruises are not popular just in Alaska, but in Scandinavia as well. The land of the Vikings offers pretty villages, sparkling white landscapes, and a chance sighting of the kaleidoscopic Northern Lights. The fjords of Norway, Stockholm, St Petersburg and Copenhagen see many passengers alight at their ports.

Further along in Europe, the summer invites thousands of cruise ship guests to the Mediterranean coast. History and food are the mainstays here, although the beaches and other local attractions do not drag along too far behind. Athens and Santorini, Barcelona, Dubrovnik, Istanbul, Lisbon, Rome and Venice, Valletta and Villefranche-sur-Mer present a colourful addition to your picture postcard collection of holiday images.

In the East, cruises are now venturing more frequently to ports such as Hong Kong, Macau, Bali, Shanghai, Busan, Cochin, Bintulu, Yangon, ports in New Zealand and Dubai. An increasing number of guests are now travelling Eastwards, and with many cruise ship chefs hailing from this region, it presents the warmth of feeling of being closer to home.

Wherever it is, having cruise ship jobs can seem like a perpetual vacation, what with the beautiful ports of call of each cruise line. Between shifts at work, crew can enjoy time off in some of the most beautiful coastal places on Earth.

Cruise line jobs offer extensive potential for growth through skills and experience. It is certainly not easy cooking for thousands of people every day for months on end. While this may seem stressful, it is exactly this that helps you perfect your skills to a point where much of the basics can literally be done with your eyes closed.

At every level, there is something to learn. When you first join a cruise line kitchen on the bottom rung, you learn tips and tricks of getting things done much quicker. The all-important knife skills are honed and you will learn to be a force to reckon with in the kitchen. These may seem small at first, but they all add up as you climb the ladder or if you need to switch to a land-based job later.

Many cruise lines are taking on celebrity chefs from around the world to run their restaurants. At mid-level positions, it presents the chance of a lifetime to work with and learn from chefs who are renowned everywhere. Positions at similar land-based restaurants are very hard to come by.

When working on a cruise line, you learn to cook on the go. This means understanding stocks and storage, menus that are pre-set weeks earlier, and maintaining quality all the time. Because cruise ship kitchens only touch port once every few days, chefs must ensure that stocks last the while. If the kitchen runs out of an ingredient, there is no way of ‘popping to the store’ to replenish stocks.

This also helps you learn how to think on your feet – how to salvage a situation and still ensure that the customer is happy with the quality and has no idea what happens behind the scenes. These are all skills that will set you apart from your land-based colleagues and help you grow in your career.

Working with large quantities and maintaining the standard of quality expected by the company also adds weight to one’s resume. Working in cruise ship jobs brings you in touch with a variety of nationalities and cultures, and helps you learn techniques of each in a way that land-based restaurants can rarely, if ever, do.

The key to ensuring you make the most of your cruise ship kitchen job is to work as hard as you can and take the opportunity to learn from as many people as possible. The skills and techniques you learn on board will stand you in good stead for a lifetime.

One of the perks of working cruise ship jobs is that you never work alone; there is always someone to help you out. The aim of a cruise ship kitchen is to provide the best food in hygienic conditions with stellar guest service. To ensure deadlines are met and thousands of hungry passengers are fed multiple times a day, the kitchen crew must work like a well-oiled machine, each playing his or her part to have everything moving like clockwork.

It all starts once the menus are set and supplies are ordered from vendors at the various ports the cruise liner will call at. The produce is inspected for quality and freshness and loaded onto the ship. During this stage, workers often load the produce into metal trays that can easily be cleaned and stored in refrigerators at various temperatures. This helps kitchen staff easily identify food for preparation, a key to time management during dining rush.

Dozens of workers in the kitchen engage in food preparation – cleaning, washing, chopping, dicing, and generally completing the basics before the chefs even begin cooking. This reduces the need for the chefs to spend time on these basic activities, and allows them to concentrate more on quality of taste and presentation. Records of all stores are kept up-to-date as they get used, so the inventory manager or storekeeper can order ahead of reaching the next port to stock up on supplies.

Sections differ in cruise line kitchens based on specialties. Most often the work space is divided into the ‘hot kitchen’ and the ‘cold kitchen’. In the former, vegetables, fish, meats, soups, pastas, hot side dishes and grilled food are some of the items cooked. All baking, pastry, buffets, ice carvings, salads and cold meats, etc, are taken care of in the cold kitchen. All the stocks and marinades for the hot galley and breads and ice creams for the cold galley are made in house for the restaurants, so a major slip up by one team can throw the entire ship’s culinary department off course.

Even wait staff are part of this big team. They bring in the orders and convey important messages such as food allergies or the doneness of steaks to the kitchen, and also ensure that guests in the massive dining areas are served exactly what they requested.

Cruise line kitchens are a study in time management, efficiency and team work. Working in the culinary department on board a cruise ship can sharpen your skills in these areas and boost your career.

Most job profiles for cruise ship chef jobs request for the candidate to be proficient with time management. This is because the volumes of guests on board require for an almost constant stream of food making the rounds.

The basics of good individual time management skills on any cruise line job include the ability to handle many tasks simultaneously, set priorities and meet deadlines. This helps each member of the kitchen staff concentrate on his/her own responsibilities while at the same time being a cog in a well-oiled machine. Teamwork clearly goes a long way in keeping the kitchens on a cruise ship running smoothly.

In scenarios where thousands of guests are involved on a daily basis, decisions at the top have a trickle-down effect. Management begin with predicting the tastes that will dominate the cruise based on the type of passengers or food trends – for example Europeans prefer lighter wines, burgers and fries are popular midnight snacks. This means stocks can be ordered and prepared accordingly.

It also helps prepare a menu, planned well in advance of setting sail so that the kitchen staff know exactly what they are doing and when. Once the stores are bought, labelled and stocked, preparation and cooking are done in a quick, efficient, timely fashion. It is no mean feat to feed around 4,000-5,000 guests each day, with up to 20,000 meals!

Today, technology helps inform the kitchen how many passengers are eating and at which of their restaurants. With this, the staff can anticipate a rush and be better prepared to dish out meals quicker. To save time, the heads of the cruise ship kitchens design simple menus, for example, serving a single type of main of meat, poultry and seafood each. Cooks can then prepare food as the orders come in to reduce wastage.

Having many different kitchens specialising in various cuisines helps cooks concentrate on few jobs better. Some cruises like the Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas have about 20 galleys, including a butcher shop. In each kitchen, work continues almost non-stop round the clock, with teams dedicated to a single job – cleaning and butchering meat, washing and cutting vegetables, making stocks, etc.

In cruise ship kitchens, being on time and efficient at work is imperative, since every minute wasted is a delayed meal.

Cruise ship jobs come with many perks, including good salaries and valuable experience. However, getting one is not a piece of cake. The first step to applying for a new job on the cruise lines is writing a good resume, or curriculum vitae as it is known in the UK.

Remember that cruise ship companies get thousands of applications every day, so making yours stand out can help you nail the job quicker than others. Most recruitment personnel do not have much time to look through lengthy, complicated information, and it works in your favour to keep your resume short, to the point and focused on the position you are applying for.

Writing short resumes does not mean leaving out sections of your qualifications or experience. It helps to consider that most recruitment personnel are busy and will avoid resumes in which they cannot find important information quickly. So keep your resume around one or two pages long depending on your experience and the position you are applying for. Accompany it with a polite, formal cover letter that briefly highlights your skills and qualifications, and if you are uploading it electronically, it’s best to save it in common file formats such as Microsoft Word (doc), or Adobe Acrobat (pdf).

Within the resume, include important information such as education, work experience and skills that relate to the position. Many kitchen-related cruise ship jobs are specific to a certain department – perhaps pastry or a certain type of cuisine. Highlighting information within that context that makes you stand apart – say an award or a challenging situation that you turned around – can set you apart from the other job applicants.

You should list your work experience in reverse chronological order, beginning with the latest position you held, or the latest qualification you achieved. Knowing languages is an added advantage in cruise ship jobs and it helps to point out how fluent you are in each. It can also work to your advantage to include a short brief about the previous companies you worked for, particularly if they were local or not globally popular, such as indicating how many seats the restaurant had or the kind of cocktails served in the bar or if it was a specialty restaurant.

Do not forget to include achievements, particularly those related to the position you are applying for. It also helps to list out voluntary work that demonstrates relevant skills, such as team work or working to deadlines. Always include your contact details, and if requested, a professional formal photograph. Remember to double check for spelling errors before sending or printing your resume.

Cruise ships are known for delicious food 24/7. It’s not uncommon to see staff who have just returned home from a contract a few sizes larger than they were when they left. Cruise ship jobs are hard work, no doubt, but it’s very easy to put diets and exercise on the back burner and balloon out of shape.

Food: Cruise lines are full of eye-popping temptations – there are various ‘mess’ areas based on what rank one holds, but all offer a great variety of dishes and at top quality too. Everyone working on the cruise ship eats at the four main buffets – breakfast, lunch, dinner and midnight. That’s a lot of food, every day. Start with choosing small side plates instead of dinner plates. Grab some salad and drink a glass of water before you start to eat. It takes a while for your brain to realise when you are full, so this will kick-start the process. Often, when you are in a rush, eating slowly might not be possible, so limiting portion sizes so that you just ‘taste’ all the dishes you like can help. Save dessert for special occasions or weekends. And if you haven’t had the chance to taste everything on the buffet, it’s ok. It will always come around again sometime during your contract.

Beverages: It’s important to stay hydrated, but the choice of drinks is important. Many slushes and fruit juices can pack in way more calories than you think. Your first choice should always be water;it even helps curb fake hunger pangs. Another privilege of cruise ship jobs is access to the crew bar with cheap alcohol and other beverages. This temptation is easy to succumb to after a long day at work, but every drink packs a calorific punch. Decide ahead how many drinks you’ll have a day/a week and stick with it. Choose fruit drinks without sugar to avoid extra calories and if possible with fibre to keep you feeling full.

Exercise: Most cruise ship jobs can be quite hectic, so fitting in time for exercise might not always be possible. However, even 15 minutes a day is better than nothing at all. Hit the gym if time off work permits. If not, it’s always possible to do a few push-ups, skip or fit in a set of bodyweight exercises before you head in for a shower. When in port, give walking around, swimming in the sea or cycle tours precedence over taxi rides and lounging in cafés.

Staying in shape on board doesn’t just make you look and feel good, but helps you work faster and more efficiently too.

When thousands of people live in close quarters for any length of time, the chance of infection increases. This amplifies when food and cleanliness are involved, so in cruise ship kitchens high hygiene and sanitation standards are of vital importance. The last thing cruise lines want is a guest who had a bad experience.

Many cruise companies follow the United States Public Health, or USPH, laws. The institution’s agency the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) helps cruise ships in maintaining hygiene standards and curbing the spread of gastrointestinal illnesses.

Cruise lines typically have a weekly inspection but ramp things up when docked for port health inspections. Prior to arrival there are inspections as well, to ensure that everything is up to standard. If a ship fails an inspection, they could face consequences including bad publicity. Ships must score 86 or more on 100 to pass the test.

To maintain standards, cruise ship kitchens must ensure that food is handled and stored properly, dishes are cleaned and sanitised adequately, work stations are immaculate and personal hygiene is stringently adhered to.

There is a whole list of instructions that cruise ship kitchen employees must follow, particularly with regard to the storage and handling of cooked and raw foods, and dirty dishes. Those cooking and prepping food are not allowed to wear jewellery of any sort, not even a watch. Meat must be thawed in a separate room on different shelves and with proper labelling.

Cruise lines ensure that those involved in preparation, storage and service of food wear plastic gloves when necessary and always wash their hands after coming in contact with anything soiled. Repairs to all equipment are expected to be done immediately, and the kitchen is kept free of dust and grime. Garbage is thrown into appropriate containers with bags that are air tight.

The CDC often conducts surprise inspections and to pass these, staff in the food and beverage section clean everything with a special bleach solution and ensure everything is labelled and stored correctly. CDC inspectors even go so far as to check the temperature of warm food on the buffet lines, defrosting procedures and location of food in the defrosting rooms, and temperature of food items in the refrigerator.

Sometimes, however clean a ship may be, passengers could bring germs on board, one of the most contagious being the norovirus which causes viral gastroenteritis. It spreads quickly and easily, and with passengers and crew in such close quarters on a cruise ship, an outbreak becomes very real. To avoid this, cruise ship kitchen employees are expected wash their hands carefully, and often, with soap and water; thoroughly rinse fruit and vegetables and cook shellfish properly; clean and sanitise kitchen utensils, counters and surfaces often; and wash table linen, napkins and other laundry thoroughly.

Maintaining strict hygiene practices helps keep both employees and guests healthy and safe from diseases.