How do I get into yachting with no experience?

Almost every green candidate turns up with the same two certificates. That is the first thing to understand: the tickets do not separate you from anyone, because everybody applying has them. What separates you is everything the certificate list does not show — and most first CVs are full of that evidence, written in the wrong language.

What actually gets green crew hired

Captains and chief stews hiring at entry level are not comparing certificate lists. They are assessing four things: attitude, availability, location and legal employability. One agency puts it plainly — the employer pays more attention to character and work ethic than to qualifications.

So the strongest green CV proves you are legally employable and physically present, demonstrates work ethic through land experience described at a professional standard, and reads like someone the crew would happily share a cabin with.

Location and availability are hiring criteria, not admin. "Antibes, available now" and "Cape Town, available in six weeks" are entirely different candidates, because somebody has to pay to move you. If you are not in a hub yet, write it as a fact:

Location:  Cape Town, South Africa — relocating to Antibes [Month YY]
Available: On arrival, [Month YY]

Claiming a hub you have not reached is extremely common and one of the few genuinely career-damaging lies available to you. It gets people shortlisted, then burned.

Legal employability decides everything downstream. Nationality, all passports held, visas with expiry dates — B1/B2 for the US and the Florida circuit, Schengen for the Med. This is often the single field that decides whether a CV goes forward. State your actual status as a plain fact and stop there. Do not assume what a visa permits: a Schengen visitor visa does not allow daywork. Get that determination from a crew agent or an immigration adviser. Being wrong costs a ban, not an interview.

Which land background feeds which department

Pick a department before you write anything. A CV is written for exactly one of them, and leaving "stewardess" in the profile of a CV sent for a deckhand role is a standard own goal.

Department	What feeds it
Deck	Construction trades — carpentry, joinery, painting, varnishing, plumbing, electrical — explicitly valued, because a yacht's exterior is a maintenance job. Mechanics. Lifeguarding, surf instruction, sailing, diving (Divemaster up), jet-ski and kite-surf instruction. Fishing and commercial boat work. Military, particularly navy engineering. Landscaping and outdoor work. Competitive sport, which signals fitness and discipline
Interior	Hospitality above all — restaurant, bar, hotel, resort, cruise ship, private estate, events, cabin crew — with fine dining and five-star hotels the gold standard. Housekeeping and household staff. Childcare and nannying, called an essential and often overlooked skill because family charters need it. Beauty, massage, hairdressing, yoga and personal training, which make a multi-skilled stew. Luxury retail. Barista, sommelier and mixology
Engineering	Marine, automotive, plant or HGV mechanics; refrigeration and air-conditioning; electrical; AV and IT; welding and fabrication
Galley	Professional culinary training, close to a prerequisite. Without it the realistic entry is cook or stew/cook on a smaller yacht, not chef on a large one
Any	Admin and bookkeeping, languages, musical ability, photography and videography — charter and crew content is genuinely wanted — first aid and medical training

If your background looks thin: one survey of stewardesses found roughly half came from hospitality, about 20% from housekeeping, childcare or customer-facing roles, and around 30% had minimal directly relevant experience. A weak background is not disqualifying. Describing it badly is.

Translating land experience into yacht language

The defining green-crew failure is listing land jobs as bare duties. Pull each job apart and re-describe it in the vocabulary a captain uses. The test is whether the line conveys a standard, not an activity.

Land phrasing	Yacht phrasing
Worked in a restaurant	Delivered formal silver service for up to 40 covers in a fast-paced fine-dining environment
Cleaning job	Maintained five-star presentation standards across N rooms, including care of marble, leather and high-value surfaces
Babysitting	Sole charge of children aged 3–9, planning activities and managing routines for a private family
Bar work	Solo drinks service and cocktail preparation for a 60-cover venue, including stock control and cellar rotation
Carpenter's labourer	Hands-on exterior maintenance including sanding, varnishing, painting and finish carpentry to a high standard
Lifeguard	Water safety supervision and rescue-qualified, with confident small-craft and watersports handling
Diesel fitter	Overhauled and maintained heavy diesel plant to manufacturer specification, including preventative maintenance, fault diagnosis and component rebuilds

The numbers above are shapes, not facts. Substitute your own — covers, rooms, ages, team size — because a number is what makes a claim checkable and therefore credible.

Two to three sentences per land role: what you did, to what standard, and how you went beyond what was asked. A bare job title with a date is a wasted line. Show rather than assert — do not write "attention to detail", write the thing that demonstrates it. Captains name "hardworking" and "easygoing" as turn-offs, along with mission statements and corporate-synergy phrasing.

And do not leave off the jobs you think are irrelevant. That bar job is the evidence of work ethic. It is the whole case.

Certificates: get two, add one, then stop

Mandatory. STCW Basic Safety Training, the five-module course covering survival, fire fighting, first aid, personal safety and security awareness — roughly $1,000–2,000 or £1,000-plus. Plus the ENG1 seafarer medical, roughly $100–200. Without both, nobody can legally employ you.

Worth having. PDSD. For deck, RYA Powerboat Level 2 is close to standard for deckhands, then a PWC licence, Yacht Rating and PADI Open Water upwards. For interior, Food Safety/Hygiene Level 2 is specifically preferred by chief stews for junior crew, then silver service, barista and WSET Level 1–2.

Often over-bought. Training schools recommend their own introductory deckhand and stewardess courses, and those do help with context and confidence. But working crew consistently report the extra courses were unnecessary for their first job, and the money would have been better spent on flights, accommodation and time in a hiring hub. Buying certificates before checking what job adverts ask for is one of the most-cited green-crew mistakes.

Get STCW and ENG1, add the one department-appropriate ticket, then keep the rest as runway in Antibes, Palma or Fort Lauderdale — budgeted in weeks, not days.

A course booked but not yet done still belongs on the CV, with status and date: "STCW Basic Safety Training — booked, completing March 2026". Do not list it as though already held.

Hobbies are load-bearing

One agency calls the interests section arguably the most important on a green CV, which would be absurd advice for a corporate application. Two reasons: crew live together, so captains use hobbies to judge fit with a boat's culture and programme; and hobbies frequently are saleable skills onboard — diving, watersports, yoga, massage, photography, mixology, fishing, languages and musical ability all serve guests directly.

Make them specific and true. "Travel, socialising, music" is filler. "Free-diving to 20m, competitive open-water swimming, and shooting and editing video — happy to produce charter and crew content" is a hiring argument. Three to five entries.

One page, and what goes on it

One page if you are green. Two only if you have genuine daywork to list. Going over is a listed rejection reason in its own right, and recruiters report spending under 30 seconds on a first screen — one commonly cited figure is six seconds before deciding whether to keep reading.

Order: photo, name and target position, contact block, personal details, certifications, land experience, education, interests, references.

The photograph is the highest-leverage element on the document. In one survey of captains, 98% said they want one and around 14% said they reject immediately on a poor or missing photo. Head and shoulders, smiling, plain ironed white polo, marina or neutral background, natural light, colour JPEG under 250KB, taken by someone else. No selfies, sunglasses, hats or filters.

Delete the Yachting Experience heading entirely if you have nothing for it — an empty heading advertises the gap. Land certificates such as pool lifeguard, first aid, food hygiene and responsible service of alcohol go under Additional Qualifications.

Name three referees with live contact details, most recent first. Not fellow crew, never family. A private employer who paid you — the family you nannied for — is legitimate. Do not write "references available on request": roughly 87% of captains check references, and speed of verification is a hiring advantage.

Then proofread twice. In one captains' survey, spelling, grammar and sloppy formatting accounted for around 42% of rejections, the single largest bucket.

Turning no experience into some

Daywork is the standard route in, and it belongs on the CV — labelled honestly as daywork. Aggregate it rather than listing single days:

Jun 25 – Aug 25    DAYWORK — Various yachts, Antibes
                   45 days across 8 yachts (30m–60m). Exterior wash-downs,
                   detailing, varnishing, tender cleaning and interior turnarounds.

Collect a reference after every daywork job and delivery. For a green candidate a named yacht reference is worth more than another certificate — it converts "no experience" into "some experience, with people who will vouch for it".

Work three channels: crew agencies, registering with all of them rather than two; the Facebook and WhatsApp job groups; and dockwalking. On the docks by 07:00–08:15, ask for the head of department rather than a peer, never approach with guests aboard or during bunkering, and dress as though it is a speed interview. Dockwalking requires the right to work in that country — Fort Lauderdale is off-limits without US authorisation, and post-Brexit the Med is legally fraught for British passport holders.

Never pay a recruiter to represent you; legitimate agencies do not charge candidates. Treat sub-€1,800/month offers, interviews arranged off-vessel in private locations, and requests for unprofessional photographs as red flags, and walk away.

If you would rather not assemble the layout by hand, superyachtcvs.com builds a one-page CV in this format from the work you have already done ashore. The translation is the part that matters either way.