Interviewing as an employer is one thing, but as a Captain candidate, there are great questions you can ask at interview too.
I currently coach / advise two or three Captains every week on their CVs and how to interview to the best of their ability. It’s something I enjoy and hopefully the Captains feel they benefit from.
Whilst I’m not going to give up all of my trade secrets in one blog, I am going to cover an area which is much neglected. Normally as a Captain candidate, or any crew for that matter, you will be given the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the interview which is a potential goldmine of information.
The two main purposes of these questions should be:
1: If you are interviewing with a yacht manager, owners’ rep, family office, other captain, etc. this is a brilliant chance to get insight into the owners’ likes and dislikes so are prepared to wow them with some amazing answers should they interview you too.
2: You need to get full insight into the program to know whether it is the right one for you or not. How can you make a decision which impacts upon every area of life if you don’t have all of the pertinent information? An interview is a two-way street and ideally both you and the owner should be keen on the other.
So two very valid reasons you should be asking probing, incisive questions. However, often when I ask Captains what questions they are going to ask, they struggle to come up with anything apart from the obvious ones around itinerary, logistics, start date.
A lot of the obvious stuff will have been answered already during the interview. If you don’t have some intelligent questions prepared then you also run the risk of having to say ‘I don’t have any questions, you’ve answered them already’. This is never a good look, even at a junior level, let alone senior level.
So lets give one good example for each of the above reasons.
1: What did the owner like/dislike about the previous Captain?
This is a fantastic question and you can ask both variants of it. I would always start with the positive version first and then follow up with the negative after. This will give you priceless insight into the owner. Then prior to interview you can craft answers which emphasise that you are a good communicator who can put together monthly reports for the owner (one example).
2: Is there a training budget for crew onboard? If so, is that an individual budget per crew member or just a pot of cash the yacht can use as they see fit?
I can see people wondering what relevance of a training budget has with whether or not this is a good program? But this question gives insight into the attitude towards retaining crew and their professional development. Is it important to the owner? I would suggest two things. If there is no budget for this, or it’s very undefined, then there will be budgetary issues elsewhere. Secondly, if the owner isn’t that bothered about retaining crew then it will be significantly harder for you to do an amazing job for them. Partly because you will be recruiting more, partly because this suggests other parts of the package will be poor and partly because if they don’t care about the crew then they will be harder to work for. All of which will impact negatively upon your job satisfaction and stress levels.
Amazing the insight that can be gleaned from one good question…
If you want to find out more about my coaching or if you want access to the questions then please drop me an email on tim@quaycrew.com.
