What a chief stew reads first
A chief stewardess hiring a 2nd or 3rd stew usually has forty CVs and ten minutes. The order she reads in:
- Photo and personal block. Presentation is the job, so the photo is judged as a work sample. Then nationality, visas, location, availability, smoker, tattoos.
- STCW, ENG1 and Food Safety Level 2. The first two make you legal. Chief stews specifically prefer junior crew to arrive with the food hygiene certificate already done.
- Which service styles you have actually performed. Silver, plated, family-style and buffet are different skills. "Service experience" tells her nothing; "silver and plated for 12 guests" tells her you can be put on a table on day one.
- Laundry. It is half the job on most boats and most junior CVs skip it. If you can press a shirt and handle a couture dress, say so in those words.
- Land hospitality at a real standard. Five-star hotel, fine dining, private households and events are the strongest feed into this department. They are not "unrelated experience"; they are the reason she will call you.
The sample above is a fictional first-season stewardess. Her one season is written with numbers, her hotel years are written like crew work, and her daywork is labelled as daywork rather than dressed up as a job.
The certificates this role needs
- STCW Basic Safety Training and ENG1 medical, both with expiry dates
- PDSD, usually done alongside STCW
- Food Safety and Hygiene Level 2 as a minimum; Level 3 reads well for 2nd stew and up
- WSET Level 1, then Level 2 once you are earning; wine service is what separates a 3rd stew from a 2nd
- GUEST interior modules (introduction, then advanced service) are recognised across the industry
- Barista, mixology, floristry, massage, yoga, nails, hair and childcare are all genuine hiring edges. A stew-plus gets picked over a stew, and family charter programmes actively want childcare.
How to write the experience lines
One line per boat: role, M/Y, name in bold, length in metres, private or charter, Month Year dates, then two or three fragments. Name the surfaces, the service styles and the events. Never write "service" on its own.
- Before: Responsible for providing exceptional guest service and maintaining the interior to the highest standard.
- After: Silver and plated service for 12 guests, breakfast to dinner. Heads and beds across 6 guest cabins: turndown, amenities, marble and leather care.
- Before: Worked as a waitress in a busy hotel restaurant, delivering excellent customer experiences.
- After: Silver and plated service for up to 40 covers a night in a 5-star hotel restaurant. Ran a section of 6 tables. Wine service from a 300-bin list.
Label-prefixed bullets ("Laundry: …", "Service: …") are a real interior convention and are fine where a role spans several areas. If your CV still reads like a restaurant CV, upload the CV you have and it is rebuilt in this format, with the personal block, the certificates with dates and the vessel lines in the order a chief stew reads them.
Three mistakes that bin this CV
- A photo that reads as a night out. Hair down, sunglasses, a bar behind you. The photo is your first plated dish. Head and shoulders, hair tidy, plain polo or blouse, natural light, taken by someone else.
- "Service experience" with no styles named. She cannot tell whether you have carried three plates or poured champagne on a swim platform. Name every style and every surface.
- Hotel years buried under "other employment". Four years of fine dining is the strongest thing on a junior interior CV. Give it room and write it like crew work, with covers, sections and wine lists.
For the full rules on what goes in, section by section, read what to include in a yacht CV.
Where this role goes next
3rd Stew to 2nd Stew to Chief Stewardess, typically over three to five years, with wine (WSET 2), team leadership and inventory or budget responsibility as the gates. Purser is a separate track on larger yachts, built on administration, accounts and crew logistics. A season on a busy charter boat with back-to-back turnarounds moves an interior CV faster than a quiet private one, because the numbers on the page are bigger.
Salary
Published crew-salary guides put junior stewardesses in a wide band starting around the low thousands of euros a month, rising with vessel size, charter tips and service skills. Reported ranges vary widely; verify with an agency for the size of boat you are targeting.
