For me, the biggest issue in yacht crew recruitment (outside of the crew themselves) is the current standard practice of going out to multiple agencies at once instead of sticking with one crew agent.
When I speak to people and explain why I think this is less than optimum, everyone gets it. But the vast majority of yachts still go to multiple agencies.
I fully understand why in some scenarios; if there is a tight time frame to work to, for example. The perception is that going to 3 different agencies instead of just one crew agent means more good candidates; it doesn’t in my opinion – agencies are fishing from very similar pools, however some agencies don’t reference check so send candidates who look ‘good’ but are poor in reality.
Or you’ve been instructed to use agency A by the Captain, agency B found you a good candidate last time and agency C is your friends, and you want to support them.
So, lets flip this is a little bit and picture a scenario which we can all relate to.
You hire 3 dayworkers who all turn up at the back of the yacht roughly on time with varying degrees of presentability. You give them detailed instructions about what work needs doing, the standards required and what is expected of them.
However, you then turn around and tell them you will only pay one of them and that is randomly allocated. It doesn’t matter how hard they work or what the quality of work is. All that matters is at some point during the day one of them will do something which means they collect the money. The rest will get nothing.
What do you think will happen?
I would suggest that the work ethic will probably be lacking, and the quality of work won’t be great either. Yet, that is basically what yachts do all the time when they go out to multiple agencies. It encourages speed, not quality, and the results are often correspondingly poor.
A further tweak on this, some yachts tell us that they have CVs already via crew, social media, job boards etc. That’s the equivalent of telling the dayworkers that there is a very good chance none of them will get paid and all of their work will be fruitless. Again, this means a lower standard of service when you tell many agencies this.
The alternative…
Now let’s imagine, you’ve identified the dayworker who you think has the most potential and you only hire him. But when they get to the yacht, you tell them if they do a good job and work hard there will be lots more daywork in the future, what do you think happens?
They will work much harder to do everything to the best of their ability.
To drag this analogy out further… If the dayworkers are just given brief, generic instructions about cleaning the deck at the start of the day, it’s unlikely they will do an amazing job. However, if given a detailed brief and feedback throughout the day so they can fine tune what they are doing, you’re much more likely to get the result you want.
I genuinely believe working with one crew agent exclusively gives you much better results than working with several – providing you work with them in a collaborative manner.
Give me a shout on tim@quaycrew.com to find out what we are offering our clients who commit to working exclusively with us.
