I had my Steiner cruise ship spa interview on Sunday and boy was it INTENSE!!!
During my time researching Steiner and, more importantly for me, what they are like to work for I found that I had very little access to useful information. Each time I searched I found that everything I was pulling up was forum based and although I found a lot of useful stuff this way it was crowded by a lot of bitching and fighting from the two main groups of ‘Steiner sucks’ and ‘Steiner rocks’. Trawling through all of the snippy, passive-aggressive comments to find the info you are actually looking for is both exhausting and counter-productive. It in fact puts a downer on the whole process. The one girl I found who had any useful information at all was this girl >
https://www.youtube.com/user/LepaJessi?feature=
Watching her videos made me feel a little more prepared for my interview, which seemed to be approaching faster than I could comprehend, but I still didn’t have much of a clue as to the ins and outs of the interview process itself. When I originally decided that a blog would be the way forward for keeping contact with my nearest and dearest I thought it’d likely be a good idea to totally and fully document my entire experience from interview onwards on the off chance that someone else was panicking as much as I did and found my information useful. So here it is!
BEFORE THE INTERVIEW
I received a few emails from my regional recruiter once I had submitted my online application (you won’t need help with that – it’s super easy!) detailing briefly the itinerary for the day and listing anything I would need for my interview. As a masseuse this was pretty basic; I needed no model and all that was listed was towels for the trade test, no big deal although I even managed to freak out about that as I had no guide as to size or quantity (Were we going to be marked on bed set-up? How big was the bed? Did I need enough for more than one treatment? What about facial towels? What about hot damp towels?!).
The basic information distributed was as follows:
9.30 am Welcome
Presentation
The presentation will be very informative and is designed to answer many of the questions you will have. During the presentation we will also cover visa requirements, medical requirements and hold a question & answer session to ensure you have all the information you need.
NB If you feel after the presentation that a life on board a ship is not for you, we will not be offended if you choose not to be interviewed, however please inform us before you leave.
12.30 pm ½ hour break for lunch
1.00 pm Practical tests (see attached form for details)
6.00pm approx, interviews and practical tests should be finished.
THE INTERVIEW AND TRADE TEST WILL TAKE BETWEEN 5-6 HOURS. WE RECOMMEND YOU BRING A PACKED LUNCH
Please bring the following documents with you to the interview – 2 photocopies of your Passport, photocopies of your CV and certificates, plus 1 coloured full length photo of yourself printed on A4 paper.
AS THIS IS AN INTERVIEW WE RECOMMEND THAT YOU COME SMARTLY DRESSED & WELL GROOMED
PLEASE ALSO NOTE THAT CRUISE LINES OBJECT TO TATTOOS, SO IF YOU HAVE A TATTOO, PLEASE DISCUSS THIS WITH US BEFORE YOU ATTEND THE INTERVIEW
Sounds easy enough? A presentation from the recruiter followed by a trade test…pretty standard procedure right?
DO NOT BE FOOLED!
A few days before my interview date I received a further email stating this:
When you arrive you must have a note pad and pen to take notes throughout the day. You will also need to bring a scanned copy of the below documents. Please be aware we do not accept original documents. Once you give your documents to us they are not returned.
1 x copies of your passport, 1 x copy of all relevant certificates, 1x full length picture on an A4 piece of paper, 1 x copy of your CV.
Please bring lunch with you or money to buy lunch in town or the hotel
The interview will be held as a group. It proceed as follows:
ALL PROFESSIONALS
9:00am – Introduction
9:30am – complete paperwork and Written exam
10:30am – Group presentation
12:00pm – Questions and Answers
12:15pm – Public speaking and Appearance assessment
IF SUCCESSFUL WITH EXAM, PUBLIC SPEAKING AND APPEARANCE THEN YOU WILL CONTINUE WITH THE PRACTICAL ASSESSMENT.
Ok, so now I have a written exam, public speaking and appearance assessment to contend with as well?! Having no idea what the written exam entailed and only two days in which to prepare for it really helped let loose my crazy perfectionist streak and I must have been driving everyone I know crazy with my constant worried chattering. I revised every piece of anatomy and physiology work I could get my hands on (which when you consider how high a level my degree takes this too was a LOT of information) as well as contraindications and spa safety. Turns out that this was definitely over-preparing but we shall get to that in a moment.
THE INTERVIEW PROCESS
After getting up at 4:30am to start getting ready (Thanks for the wake up call Kate!) for my 7am departure from the house and ensuring I had coffee to calm me down I applied my tattoo cover-up, applied-removed-reapplied my makeup about 3 times, straightened my hair and forced it into some form of submission, dressed up in my wonderfully smart and eye-catching interview outfit (again, all thanks to Kate, my unofficial personal shopper and style guru!) and headed out the house once I had triple checked my bag for all my documents and towels. I arrived in the city at about 8:35am giving me plenty of time to find the hotel and throw another coffee down my neck. When I walked into the hotel at about 8:45am I was immediately confronted with a foyer full of young girls all chattering animatedly like they all knew each other. Pretty darn intimidating! Spying a few empty chairs at the back I toddled over and introduced myself to the gentleman sitting there, who it turned out was interviewing for the position of hairdresser, and enjoyed a few minutes exchanging information about the process and what we expected. He speculated that we might be being watched to see how easily we mingled in the situation, which is entirely plausible as someone standing alone and shy in the corner isn’t likely to settle into ship life quickly, so my first piece of advice = Be confident and friendly – everyone there is feeling just as nervous as you but talking to each other makes it so much better!
Eventually there was movement in the corner and we shuffled en mass through to our conference room where we were told to file in, find a seat and then approach the front desk to collect our paperwork one group at a time (in our case beauty followed by massage, hair, then personal trainers). I decided to hang to one side and ask each person to go through if they were massage until someone said yes, because then at least it would turn out that I’d be sat with at least one person in my interview category. This turned out to be a really good plan and we all sat on the same few rows, so we had a chance to get a little acquainted and others to fall back on if we didn’t understand something. The paperwork consisted of a personal details sheet, a form that detailed what we would be scored on in our appearance review, a medical disclaimer and our written exam. The exam was sat all together in the conference room and, for my discipline of massage, consisted of 19 questions mostly based around very basic spa knowledge, the importance of a consultation, the number of vertebrae in a particular area of the spine, massage terminology and the suitability of certain mediums. It’s nothing to really worry about but if you’ve been out in industry a while it’s worth getting your old books out and brushing up a bit.
We were then given a number of questions to choose to answer in our public speaking; you had to include your name, qualifications and experience level and then select two or three other questions (Why do you want to work with Steiner? What can you offer them? What do you hope to gain? Do you fluently speak any other languages?… the usual interview questions) and had a little time to prepare our answers whilst waiting for everyone to finish their paperwork. Then came the recruiter presentation which was SUPER informative and I strongly suggest you take notes throughout this as you will forget it all within about an hour thanks to nerves!
Public speaking came next and seemed to take forever despite each person being stood for no longer than a minute usually. My advice here = Eye contact! Speak slowly and clearly, smile, answer your questions, open body language and if you can be a little funny, do be! The appearance review was also carried out at this point so make sure to stand tall and try not to look too ruffled. The public speaking is probably the most vital component of the interview as it is an essential part of ship life and successfully promoting yourself, which is of course the key to making money on the ships. If you are stuck for something to say stress the monetary aspects as a therapist driven by dollars is a successful therapist and one that makes Steiner plenty of cash, which is exactly what they are looking for.
Our lunch break ended up being half an hour long, not that it really mattered as I was too nervous to eat and instead called my mama to let her know how it was all going and get some much needed reassurance. From lunch we then went into the trade test and personal interviews, both of which were carried out at the same time in front of the whole group for your category, which can be pretty intimidating. In this they are looking for posture, the ability to massage with body parts other than the fingers and thumbs (think fore-arms, knuckles and elbows!), the ability to converse and massage at the same time and the ability to tailor a massage to accommodate for specific problem areas. You pair up for this part and it can be a little tedious, especially if you have a large interview group.
Once both partners have completed their trade test you are excused to gather your towels and wait outside. This for me was the most nerve-wracking part as there was now nothing else I could do to help myself and I just had to wait it out. Once everyone was finished and waiting outside we were told what order to put our paper work in and then they started calling in girls one by one. Watching girl after girl coming back out and looking glum saying they’d been told no was hard…all I kept thinking was “that’ll be me in a minute, what am I going to say?” but when there were about 16 girls left, myself included, we were all called in as a group and told we had been successful. I understand this doesn’t always happen and sometimes she does it on a one-to-one basis but we were running out of time and so it was easier for her this way. Paperwork was then sorted, our availability for training confirmed and our acceptance letters distributed. We were told to expect our starter packs by email within a few days and our paperwork through the mail within a fortnight with which we could start applying for our visas and CRB checks.
So…that is an interview with Steiner for the cruise ships! Next time we should hopefully have the visa application process and other such fun!
massageonthehighseas 