At times you may see Now Hiring signs on doors, but usually the companies
want you to go online to fill out applications and send resumes. So the first impression
that you used to rely on when you go to ask for employment in no longer there.

Once you submit your application and resume, you may receive a phone call
or e-mail granting an appointment for an interview.

Since your resumes are so important they must be able to stand out to potential
interviewers.

When you go for the interview you must of course try to look well
put together and organized. Sometimes problems arise from lack of experience in
certain fields. There are so many people competing for jobs some who could probably
learn new things as well as those people who have experience in using say computer
software that is required.

Interviewers literally have their pick of the pack. Your job is to show them how
hiring you will benefit the company.

You can not whack the person conducting the interview with a newspaper, and
say you have to hire me or else. That is very unprofessional, and I am sure
highly looked down upon.

I have heard several different reasons why I was not hired in certain positions
from I didn't have enough computer experience, to I seemed too nice, too honest.
I didn't fit with what they were looking for , to I interviewed well but...

Another difficulty when job hunting is that you may at times have to back off
from looking because even though, you know people are not turning you
down for a position because they do not like you, it may start to feel like it.
Obviously, these people do not even know you at all. There is nothing personal
in their refusal to hire you. It not because they don't care for your handbag.

You may say to yourself how am I suppose to get any experience in a job
when people will not even give me a chance.

Job hunting can be a very depressing business. Plus, the extra stress of
being unemployed while trying to maintain a family.

I have heard you should put in as much time searching for work that you would when
actually working. Of course, even though times have changed and ways of
job hunting have as well, I do seem to put quite a bit of effort into the
job hunting process.

I have seen so many people who have lost jobs they had for years. It is such
a sad sight to see. Especially, for older people. So many companies seem
to prefer hiring younger people.

Sometimes the only way to deal with the difficulties of job hunting is by trying
to keep a sense of humor, and keep plugging away.

However, what I have found from buying currently operational businesses is that you are buying the present owners mistakes and the customer base. You have to stitch up those problems before trying to make a transition. I actually prefer empty shells. You can start fresh with your own ideas and develop your own customer base that will be more devoted to your business practices.

You have 2 options when leasing or buying a location in a strip center that's new or old.

The Pros of finding a location in a new commercial center is that the owner of the complex may be willing to provide you with a build-out. They will actually put in the flooring, the walls, the fixtures, etc to get you in as quickly as possible. This, of course, eliminates the need for contractors, permits, and other rising costs. The Con being once they have all of this completed, will you actually know what to do with it?

There are also Pros and Cons of being next to Anchor stores in a commercial center. The Pro being that those stores will drive traffic to themselves, as well as to you. The Con being, other big name corporate restaurants will be there to, so how will you set yourself apart. Residing in an older commercial strip will place you next to stores that have been there for years that have built up their reputation. However, there may be an older anchor store that is not producing as well as it used to, right next to you.

Picking a free standing building will be very costly however; you can also find these locations to rent as well. The best free standing buildings have all of the same qualities in mind. These locations are easily accessible; they are in high traffic areas; they are highly visible; they stand out; there is an abundance of parking; they are clean and well maintained; the building fits or matches the demographic.

The resources are endless but will you know what needs to be done when you obtain that building.

Use your time wisely.

While you are waiting to open your restaurant you will be visiting the Business and Professional Regulation Board many times, getting Serv Safe certified as a Manager, getting your Sales tax number, FEIN, Structuring your business(INC, LLC, I.E.), filing for a fictitious name, writing plan reviews, buying equipment, hiring employees, and menu planning.
There are so many factors that will influence the success of your location. If you have any further questions, please leave comments and will answer them as soon as I can.
I have been around the business since I was 5 years old. My uncle owns and operated dozens of different types of restaurants. And I worked with him. I have a Culinary Degree, a Hospitality Management Degree, an Accredited Executive Chef certificate, and I just won First and Second Place at the Taste of Mount Dora.

Trust me; this information is a labor of love. Good Luck to all of you.

 

 

1. Include your first and last name at the top of your resume.
2. Right below that, you want to include your contact information.
3. Next put the word objective and list your goals that you are trying to achieve.
4. Next you want list your work experiences including the start and end date, your job title, and your job duties for each job you had, starting with your most current work experience.
5. Next list your education, including any degrees that you have earn your school/college names, and High school name, and you want to list your start and end years and it's also a very good idea that you courses that you may have taken that relates to jobs that you are searching for.
6. List your hobbies and interests that way employers can know who you are as a person.
7. Last you want to list some references, or if you want you may put “Available upon request.”

Now see that was not hard, make plenty copies of your resume, and it's very important that you keep it updated at all times.

Help, Here Come the Computers

Most people worried about that but generally their worries would be closer to home. Family, home and jobs were what people worried most about - just like now really! A major worry was jobs and the increasing use in the workplace of a recent interloper - the computer!

Let's face it. Computers and robots do not get tired. They do not need sleep. They do not get bored when they do the same thing over and over again. They don't even go on strike!

In the manufacturing industries, for examples, the production of motor vehicles was becoming mechanized. Robots took over from people in the putting together of cars. Since 1980 the amount of jobs in manufacturing in the UK has halved. A lot of people lost a lot of jobs.

Administrators and secretaries found that they were no longer in such demand because their managers would acquire the skills that had traditionally done by them. The age of “Take a letter, Miss Jones” came to an end in that decade. A lot of people lost a lot of jobs.

In publishing, the old fashioned way of producing pages of a newspaper or magazine - typesetting - which took a long time to learn - were beginning to be phased out. New software packages such as PageMaker and Quark were making traditional methods look old fashioned, time consuming and expensive. A lot of people lost a lot of jobs.

Essentially, as long as machinery (sometimes called robots) and computers cost less than employing a large number of skilled workers then businesses will make every effort to replace them with machines. Are we doomed, like George Jetson in the old cartoon series set in a possible future, The Jetsons, to sit at a disk and push one button again and again all day long?

The Humans Fight Back

As we know now, the revolution in personal computers and robotics in the 1980s was not the end of the world. However, what the work force in general discovered was that as computers evolved then they had to learn to adapt to this continual change.

A lot of people, it is true, discovered that heir skills, gained over a long period of time, were now redundant. In other words, they - and their skills - were not needed anymore. Some people never worked again. However, most people in this situation moved on and discovered new skills which could make them a living. Between 1997 and 2002 alone the amount of jobs in the UK in the technology industry doubled!

Technology has not destroyed jobs and then stood still. After all, it is human needs that push technology - and we all need to work at some point in our lives! ICT created new markets (online shopping is just one example). The whole process is called “creative destruction” by economists. In other words, when something is destroyed then something else comes along to replace it. For almost three decades that is the way the major economies of the world have operated.

ICT, then, does not really destroy jobs. It moves them around. Databases did not completely replace filing; plenty of people still do that. People still have to deliver the post. However, these things are now done in conjunction with technology, not independent of it.

What ICT does mean, though, is that any skills you have today may not be need tomorrow. This of course upsets people, but what they must do is get over it. So, you go on a course to learn something and then find in two years that it has been replaced by something else - then learn that something else!

The focus of an individual's working life in the 21st century must be on training and then, sorry, retraining! Employers too, must understand this and so many progressive organizations now have much more active training programmes than they ever had as they have realized its importance. Of course, the greatest responsibility is on the individual.

Remember the dinosaurs? Their remains were only discovered because people developed new tools to discover them. Use your new tools to see what you can discover - or even become!

NEXT:  Capacity – Increasing Levels of Achievement

Why? It is because ICT demands that people have a broader level of intellectual skills than ever before. The reasons for that are historical as well as financial. Let's take a little trip back in time and look at how a few jobs have changed because of the incorporation of ICT.

The Office Administrator

Twenty to thirty years ago, before the advent of computers in the office environment (or, to put it better, their takeover of the office environment) keyboard skills were possibly even more important than they are today. People used this old gadget called a typewriter. You may have seen them in museums!

A typewriter was a device with a set of keys that when pressed allowed us to print characters directly on to paper. No screen! No spell check! They were indispensable in offices and until the 1980s no office would be without one. The introduction of ICT, in terms of Personal Computers with word processing software largely replaced the tasks which the typewriter had been used for.

But the personal computer also introduced a higher level of complexity. With a typewriter you could usually embolden words - that's where our IT term “bold” comes from. Some typewriters could even underline and italicize text. Fonts could be changed on some typewriters but this was time consuming.

That was pretty much it. With the personal computer people could suddenly change the font on a whim. They could change the size of the text, change the colour of the text, use a spell checker, introduce graphics in to their documents - the list goes on. Then came mail merge where a single letter could be sent out to hundreds or thousands of individuals with ease.

Then there is filing. We still have filing cabinets, but not the rows and rows and rows that had to be used when everything was done on paper. Computerized databases meant that things could be much more efficiently filed. Plus when an employee wished to something, for example, list everything filed in alphabetical order, or an alternative order, this could be done with a few clicks of a mouse. Information could be retrieved from a database in any number of formats and more complex questions could be asked of data than had previously been possible.

Let's not forget the internet. It is sometimes referred to as the largest free library in the work and that has meant that there has been a revolution in the way in which research is conducted. Previously many organizations would employ people specifically to research information that the company needed and these involved very high skills. But let's face it - anyone can Google anything! That's right, isn't it?

Of course, it's not all a bed of roses for the office worker. With the new technology came the demand for new skills - including a greater ability to think for oneself and solve problems independently. Plus, in the past only secretaries and typists would be expected to have keyboard skills. Now, anyone who works in an office needs them, like it or not! With the internet, all that information is at our fingertips. However, as any student will tell you, there is a skill involved in getting the right results from a search engine!

So, a historical set of skills has been replaced by others for office workers. Most would agree though, that because of ICT the expectations of employers about what their employees can and should be able to do (and the time in which they should be able to do it!) is much higher than any time in history.

NEXT: Complexity - More jobs

Technology is all about change. Lots of change! These changes tend to enable us to do more things with this technology as the interfaces between the user and the technology becomes more and more user friendly. What is adds up to is an increase in complexity.

It's a hard word to get to grips with, complexity. One thing that many people do not seem to do anymore is use a dictionary. Let's go against this trend and have a look what the dictionaries have to say about the word.

Ouch! Most dictionaries will say something like “the quality or state of being complex”. Fantastic! A great help! Not!

So what is meant by the word complexity in relation to ICT? It could mean difficult but that is not really the point in terms of computers. Certainly, the knowledge of ICT we must have these days is more involved and intricate then ever before and that is where we are getting close to what is meant by the word.

Cast your mind back ten years. If you are a teenager right now, then ask an older person to do so! Can you remember getting your first mobile phone? It was hard to figure out at first, am I right? As for the manual that came with it, it would have made as much sense if it had been written in Martian! Now, think of the ease with which you use your mobile now, the speed at which you can text, the times you use it to connect with the internet, the games you play on it, the Bluetooth technology you use with it, the videos and tunes you download via your mobile.

Now imagine your past self ten years ago. If you had been asked if you could use or even would use all these complicated features, would your answer automatically have been a yes?

What you have done is adapted, over time, to the shift in mobile technology from being a simple tool with which to talk to others, to a multifaceted tool that you can use for all sorts of things.

So, my first message is this. Do not be freaked out by the complexity of ICT. You will adapt! Change happens, things get more complex, but it is something that you should embrace, not run away from.

WHAT THINGS BECOME

Life, eh? Complicated, difficult and often confusing. Most people would agree that out lives have become more complex and this is partly down to technology and the pace of change going on all around us. As we get older, too, we do not respond as well to change as when we were young. Can you remember seeing older people on the phone to a family member in another country and shouting rather than talking? They thought that it would enable the other person to hear them better if they shouted because they were so far away. How we chuckled! What we must try to avoid is loosing our ability to adapt. Change is going to happen however we resist it. Plus, the sheer scale of change over the last 50 years has been enormous. The way that organization work and operate has changed enormously. What organizations produce has also changed with a shift, in the UK at least, from manufacture to service (or even information) economies. How people work has changed, too.

Today, over 300,000 people make a living trading on eBay. Use a time machine and go back twenty years. Ask someone what eBay is. You would get a blank look!

So, change happens and it get more and more complex. You will be expected to adapt to these changes. If you work for an organization for a long time - say twenty years - your experience will be much greater than an employee who has just finished university or college. However, when new technology is introduced, long servers can often get confused by the changes and are quite often regarded by the younger workers as "dinosaurs". It is more important than ever to welcome change, work with it and adapt to it.

ICT could be your downfall. Make sure it's your saviour!

NEXT: The skills you need to use new technology

Capacity

Private organizations usually have a single aim - to make money, otherwise known as a profit! This usually leads to an effort to increase their capacity. This is a combination of increasing the amount of work an individual does to the end game of increasing the level of production. More and more organizations have become reliant on using ICT to achieve this end.

Trends

We will look at recent trends in the use of ICT - to try and make sense of what change is happening in the work place because of ICT and to see how these trends could go in the future. A good k knowledge of recent trends enables organizations to better prepare for the future and this feeds down to the employees. If you know what is going on you can anticipate what might happen in the future. This makes you more employable.

The Working Environment

How has ICT changed the working environment? In one word, enormously! From the layout of the offices in which we work, the location of our work places and opportunities such as working from home the introduction of ICT in to the work place has had a huge impact on the way work is done. We will look at these changes and consider aspects of these changes that may be cause for concern! We will then address how to limit any negative aspects that may have come about because of ICT in the working environment.

Some facts to ponder:

What does the future hold?

• By 2010 the top 10 “In demand” jobs did not exist in 2003
• Most students at College at the moment are preparing for jobs that do not yet exist
• They will be using technologies throughout their working lives that have yet to be invented!
• They will be solving problems that we do not even know exist at the moment!
• In September 2006 there were 106 million registered users of Myspace
• If that was a country it would be the 11th largest in the world
• There are almost 3 billion Google searches every month (who did we ask before?)

With layoffs running wild, wages stagnant or going down, bosses who, (perhaps because of a glut of available employees), making conditions at businesses less than “employee friendly”, a lot of people are dissatisfied. On TV and the internet you can see people basking in luxury, driving fancy cars, living in decorator designed homes and here you are, getting up at dawn and trudging off to a job you despise just to get that weekly pay check, just to have a way to pay the bills, afford to eat and basically, tread in place.

Quite naturally at this point it's easy to decide starting your own business, being your own boss-that might be the golden egg you've been searching for. But you may forget the egg is a by-product... and what you need is the chicken.

Late Night TV Ideas Can Be Alluring

On TV at late night, con men are pushing their seductive ideas-real estate with no money down, home businesses producing thousands weekly (they don't say how). They know you are most vulnerable in the middle of the night when you don't see a way to get ahead. Check those “home businesses”. Most of them start out by saying “How much can you afford to invest?” They aren't looking for your answer to be “Nothing.”

Can you get rich in real estate? Yes... many have. Can you start your own business and succeed? Yes, again... many have.

Getting rich in real estate is not free. You do need money for down payments or to assume loans, or you need a golden partnership with your favorite bank. You also need education about real estate and knowledgeable people like lawyers to prepare forms and supervise “closings”. And there's also that great catch no one ever talks about in commercials. Overextending yourself. Getting into a mess where you have properties that need upkeep or renovation, payments coming in, and no sales going on, and shortly you can have a situation worse than a sub-prime mortgage holder.

If you are new to business the best thing is to pass on the real estate deal and go for something simpler and less expensive like an internet business.

Is eBay an Answer?

eBay is a great place to start but you need to study it first to see exactly how it works, and what you can't do and can do. You can sell your own “stuff” piece by piece and often do very well, but you'll probably run out of items and come to the point where you want your own store. And that's where the complications begin.

To start a store you need to decide what kind of store. Most people today will think I want to sell electronics...I-pods, flat screen TVs. There's a huge demand; there is also huge competition because a lot of people have the same idea. And then there's the one you may want... a variety store. You can do that, for not much money-something like DOBA with 100,000 items. You can drop ship which basically means your customer orders something, and pays for it and someone else packs and ships it for you. Of course there is a fee for this. This cuts into your profit and you are always wondering are my orders being filled in a timely manner... if someone wants a refund or exchange will someone take care of that?

Experts say “pick a niche” and work it. Maybe you like cats-you offer anything you find about cats. Then you discover some big companies have the cat market pretty well locked up.

Or maybe fly fishing...you want to tie and sell your own flies. Great until suddenly you have more orders than you can fill, you have angry customers-nasty feedback if you're on E-bay that can get you kicked off, and your stress level goes ballistic.

So what is the right way? Here's a brief check list that could help.

What Are You Good At?

Think about what you know best. Your business should be based on something you know, something you're interested in, something you're good at. I have actually seen people wandering around looking for a business to buy-any business-maybe one they know nothing about. That's what happens to a lot of franchise owners. It looks like the simple solution...a going business...built in customers... built in good will.

But there are usually huge fees to pay. You need solid gold credit. You need to accept that you'll always be subject to someone else's rules. If they decide to change the theme of their franchise, you could end up paying the bill for changes you don't even want. Every day when you make money, a portion of it is not yours. Sometimes it's a large portion.

Better avoid franchises unless you have money to burn.

Keep It Simple

Start as small as possible. There is less trauma if you fail or quit. Don't mortgage your house for money; don't max out your credit cards. Money in a business usually comes in slower than you think; expenses are more than you expect.

If you can use a room in your house, or your garage, don't rent a building because they come with leases, monthly payments and back breaking utility bills, city permits, inspections and annoyances like people constantly hitting you up for donations.

A room is fine. You can do a lot in one room. One word of caution. If your home is covered by a subdivision covenant forbidding you to run a business there, you'll have to find another location. Also if you live in a residential area, even if it's not covered by restrictions, avoid excessive traffic, foot or vehicle, which will only alienate your neighbors.

Be Absolutely Legal

Essential things you'll need: a business permit from your city or county, a Federal I.D. (for tax purposes and so you can buy wholesale). Never, never neglect to pay your taxes. If you aren't sure about that, you need to read tax books or consult a lawyer. You need a separate bank account for your business. Pick a name for your business. You'll need to file a notice that you-John Jones-will be doing business as Jones and Associates (that might be your wife and kids).

You can run it in your local newspaper. You may be required to say how much money is being invested. You can get away with saying $1000. Failing to do these things can lead to future problems. If you sell on E-bay you'll have to pay taxes on the money you make. Some people foolishly claim a small income and huge expenses in hopes of a tax break. IRS is onto all those games. They might decide to rule your “business” is actually only a hobby.

Plan Not to Give Up

Be prepared for the long haul. Try to form a five year plan and stick with it.

Any money you make in the business that isn't needed desperately for food or shelter or utilities shouldn't be “spending money” or “treat” money. Don't go out and buy a new car yet or a fifty inch 3-D TV.

Any money made in the beginning should be plowed back into the business... more stock to sell, more equipment. It helps enormously if you can keep your regular job while establishing your business. Then you have a safety net against hard times. You know it's time to go full time for the business when you are making more at it, on a consistent basis, than your salary is producing. The key here is “consistent basis”, not just one month, but a number of months. People who recklessly quit their jobs to start a business often live to regret it bitterly. Remember almost nothing is as easy as professionals make it look. There is a learning period.

Keep Track of Details

Is it easy to start a business? Yes.

Is it hard to make it successful? Quick success sometimes comes and it looks easy and fun, but that can be followed by a tough, dry period. Suddenly your customers find someone else cheaper, more efficient, or your item just becomes “stale” and they are looking elsewhere.

That's when you work your first item...say a widget... as far as it will go but meanwhile be developing something new to introduce.

Always be polite to your customers. They are your life's blood. Say thank you for sales, give exchanges without rancor or reluctance, be available if they have a problem, solicit more business from them.

Don't change too much too soon. Don't become arrogant because you own a business.

Don't take in partners you don't know very well. Don't allow relatives to run your business. They often don't think the same way you do.

Make your office a sanctuary. You can't answer a customer's question if a five year old is tugging on your arm wanting to go to the park or the dog is asking to be walked. Everyone needs to understand when you're in your office you are busy making money and you're not available for non emergencies.

Keep track of every dime you spend and every dime coming in.

Take a break from work now and then to recharge your mind and body. It might be a kid's ballgame on Friday night, or dinner out on Sunday. Then get back to work with renewed vigor.

Most important... don't give up when times get tough. Find inexpensive solutions. You don't need file cabinets if you can buy cardboard file boxes. You don't need the new carpet until you have expectations of having customers come into your “store”. If you run an internet business you may never see your customers and don't need all the fancy things. You will need a good computer-one that will actually do the work you need done. You'll need a decent printer/scanner. Over time a copy machine can pay off big time. But you can skip (for now) things like the coffee service, imported drapes, the soothing stereo, the leather reclining office chair, the polished wood desk or gadget loaded phone system.

Be Very Careful With Credit

Try to pay cash for everything you buy. People who say “build your credit” aren't the people who have to face the monthly credit card bills. We know of huge companies that still operate on a pay as you go basis, with no debts. They are respected and adored by banks and equipment sales people and they can sleep at night.

Brown bag your lunch. Coffee breaks, lunch breaks and social get togethers are the death of a business day. Don't drink to excess after work or spend the time complaining to your friends. Instead, do something with your family. If you don't have a family, then it's time to go out with friends, but know when to say when.

Becoming one of those who stays up late partying and then can't seem to drag yourself out of bed next day or start to concentrate on what you need to do pretty much means the end of your business.

You will probably shortly decide this is entirely too much trouble and look for a job that pays a salary and let's someone else do the worrying.

If that's how you are and you know it, then that's fine, but if you really want a business simply decide whatever happens, you will find a way and not give up...if you refuse to give up you can't be beaten and the end result can be a comfortable, respectable, even luxurious life.

It's all up to you.

Having worked in residential child care from the late 1980's until 2006 I have noticed several indicators to predict which new staff members may survive the long and poorly paid hours.

What was uncovered was that a care worker needs an extremely thick and durable skin with the camouflage abilities of a chameleon. A heart constructed of diamond, the verbal skills of a hostage negotiator, all the tacked and awareness of a cardiovascular specialist, the stealth of a ninja and the physical stamina and combat experience of a SAS solider.

The most important quality though would be a slightly warped and very un-P.C. sense of humour.

A typical shift began at 6:30 am with some of the staff showering followed by the checking and packing all the safety equipment, the food supplies and vehicle. The young people and the remaining few staff who found mornings a particular challenge, were awoke at 8 am for breakfast. By 9 am the kitchen was cleaned and closed and by 9:30 am all were loaded into a large twin axle mini bus.

The day was taken up driving the 150 miles through the winter blizzards and snow drifts coving the roads to the foot of a very large, dark mountain. The journey then continued up a rather steep, twisting and dilapidated mountain track, with a shear drop to the valley floor on one side and a crumbling mountainside on the other.

Accompanying the sound of the over-revving engine, was the rather tuneless screams of "we are going to die" only ceasing once the vehicle had mounted the top of the ridge and had parked amongst some old mine workings deep in the mountains of Wales.

In this environment, these skills and abilities can be demonstrated by the care worker finding novel ways to encourage groups of inner-city teenagers to willingly and enthusiastically disembark from a nice warm bus into the pitch black and freezing atmosphere of the Welsh mountains.

Another demonstration is the ability to encourage a sense of wonder in the minds of these young people in regarding the surrounding moss-encrusted ruins of the abandoned slate mine buildings, which give only the barest indication that human civilisation ever existed.

The ideal care worker also needs abundant personality, charm and wit to persuade these reluctant teenagers, to change out of their designer clothing, and dress in grubby caving suits, rubber boots, helmets and head torches, and squeeze their "Super-size-me-Ronald MacDonald" bodies through the tiny mine-entrance hole to a narrow, damp and lightless passage, deep into the mountain.

Unfortunately these talented staff are rare and they tend to be overlooked and under-valued. They are hardly recognised or honoured by employers and it is seldom explained fully, to the applicants at the interview stage, that these traits are skill requirements for the job.

Fortunately social workers, inspectors, and the boss, have a tendency to work during the day when they are safe from the children. These professionals generally do not understand or particularly appreciate the forms of stress relief that care workers require.

The boss, especially when he is showing around venture capitalists who are destined to become your new boss, may not be supportive of any stress management techniques which fall outside of the typical focus group.

Over a 72 hour shift, some relaxation time for staff away from responsibility is important, and midnight would be regarded as a fairly safe time to be carried, squawking like a parrot, on the shoulders of a colleague to the amusement of other wild and crazy looking staff members, and is unlikely cause alarm to anyone of a sensitive nature.

All of these antics were followed by "individual client report writing" and the accounting for the day's expenditure.

Naturally the day ended with the full body length bubble wrap squashing final.

Employees who lack these qualities are generally socially responsible individuals, that tend to be good natured and kind. Have a good, moral sense of personal and social duty towards their fellow man. They may follow religious edicts which have a requirement to giving back something to the world, or working off bad karma. There are even the, "I really love kids and would really want to help them" personality types; they all have something in common: they have all been known to leave in tears after a few short hours.

'Why don't they like me; why are they so horrible to me?' They cry, the answer, "Because they can".

Any new staff member embarking on this voyage of the "Good Ship Childcare" should be aware of were all the exit signs are, the location of your flotation device and have a working knowledge on how the life boat works.

These young people, who have been often neglected, have been the victims and the perpetrators of violence, sexual abuse and criminality. They have experienced very little true friendship and have little trust in adults, particularly when those adults may represent authority.

Young people can be cruel and capricious, manipulative and devious and some adults cannot deal with this side of young peoples' behaviour and find the experience too upsetting.

So fellow shipmates, if you are unable to make these young mutineers walk the metaphorical gang plank, you generally end up walking it yourself.

There are definitely a lot of great things about working on cruise ships. But the truth is, reality doesn't stop just because you're working on a cruise ship.

It may be a different form of reality, but it's still reality!

I worked as a Musician, Band leader and Assistant Conductor on 4 different cruise ships over 2 years, so I will cover some of my experiences over several articles in the hopes of making your cruise ship career more pleasant and rewarding.

See The Sights!

One of the greatest things about working on cruises is getting paid to travel all over the world! I've been to so many beautiful places. I've traveled through Alaska and the Arctic Circle during their summer, and what a lovely, surprising experience it was to be on deck in a light pants and sweater! I thought I'd have to wear a parka!

On the flip side, I can remember touring the Caribbean islands from about January to April. I was getting so used to it that I couldn't understand why the Canadian news said it was snowing in my hometown during March! Duh!

I've been to so many exciting and vibrant cities, including:

• St. Petersburg, Russia,
• Oslo, Norway,
• Helsinki, Finland
• Istanbul, Turkey

I've toured exotic, and picturesque countries like:

• Italy
• Romania
• France
• England

I've explored ancient biblical cities like Ephesus, and strolled the thoroughfares of the legendary city of Pompeii. I felt like Indiana Jones.

Sorry, now I sound like I'm bragging! But I will always have these adventures to cherish, no matter what.

Investigate Beforehand

I would recommend buying a few good tour and travel books, way ahead of time. That way, you will have time to go through them and make out a list of what you really want to see. Get the most current editions, because things are always changing. If you use older editions, you may disappointed to find an interesting restaurant or shop or something that you planned to visit is no longer there, for example. Watching travelogues is a pretty good idea, too.

Remember that you are usually only in a given port for one day. Of course, because you are working on the ship, and the circuit you are traveling tends to repeat itself every 7 or 10 days (normally), you will be in that given port almost once a week, so you can try and spread out your touring plans.

When I was in St. Petersburg, it was an overnight stay, but initially we only got there once a month, then later on it was about once every two weeks.

Volunteer As A Tour Escort

You can, of course, go wandering off by yourself (but not alone…I wouldn't recommend that…always travel with a group for safety), but one of the most effective and safest means of touring is to volunteer as a Tour Escort with the Shore Excursions department.

Basically, you are required to "babysit" the passengers on tour, make sure that they are ok and no one gets lost, perhaps answer questions if you can, etc. I had a knapsack filled with supplies like wet naps, Kleenex, bandages, etc. that was given to me by the Shore Excursions Dept.

Just remember you are NOT a doctor or tour guide! Tour guides know the places you are visiting like the back of their hand; that is their job. Sometimes passengers will ask you the ancient history of the land…how are you supposed to know that?

However you are an ambassador of a sort for the cruise line…so be polite, and give people a good impression of you. You may not have to wear your uniform while on tour, but you still have to wear a name tag. I never had any trouble during my experiences.

You may also have to fill out a report form, basically giving your opinion and rating of the tour. Kind of like being a judge on American Idol!

Try to find out as early as you can about volunteering…there is usually a waiting list for the really popular tours, and also a seniority thing going on. Those who have been working on the ship longer than you, or are perhaps more "important", will probably have first choice. Put your name in anyways, because you never know.

Being a Tour Escort is a great way to be part of a professional tour, one that has been researched and planned by the cruise ship, so you may get to see things in a way that you wouldn't if you just went off by yourself (again, which I wouldn't recommend doing alone).

Hope this was helpful for you! I will have more articles, so check in often!