How did you find out about a career at sea/the merchant navy?

[YoungMariner]

How did you find out about a Career in the Merchant Navy? Was it a friend, family member, recruitment fair or school? Do you think that enough is done in schools to encourage a career in the Merchant Navy and give you thep correct guidance.

I personally decided to go to sea after a friend who used to work for Shell told me about his experiences.

[Mick Alton]

I found out about the job because my dad is a deck officer in the merchant navy. At my school there was a tiny A4 size poster on one of the doors and nothing else, so in my experiance not much was being done to recruit people or to give infomation on the merchant navy. The lack of info is terrible, When I told one of my old class mates that I'm a cadet she asked what warship Im on. Also she had no idea how all the things poeple buys gets into the country.

[innes1981]

good mate of mine is a 2nd officer and has been for a number of years.... i spent a lot of time doing the careers and personality quizzes and a lot of research as its 2nd time lucky and found the careers at sea website and it all went from there.

[Fox]

As someone who's never really known what direction to go in I have been to my fair share of careers events/talks looking for something that inspired me to go in a certain direction and have to say never ever was a career at sea (other than the RN) mentioned at all, not even in school. I only really found out about a merchant navy career after a chance conversation with someone who I hadn't seen for years and has recently qualified as a Deck Officer. Currently knee deep in applications trying to make up for lost time!

[Ducki52]

I was on my regiment's yacht, sailing past Warsash on our way to moor up at Hamble Marina, and the mate pointed out what it was and what the acadeny did, and I thought I fancied a slice of that. And as the above poster, now knee deep in applications

[Chiefy]

need a multiple entry button....
Father was a Chief
AND
I went to Trinity House School (back before they let women in as teachers never mind girls as students!)

[SierraTango]

I found out about the job after talking to a friend who dreamt of working onboard the Cross Channel Ferries. At first I wasn't too interested but looked it up anyway on Careersatsea and Ocean Opportunities and discovered that working onboard cruise ships was the thing for me!

[YoungMariner]

It's interesting to note already in this poll that careers advisors and recruitment fairs seems to feature fairly low, and mirrored by some comments already that the schools aren't well equipped to advise on the Merchant Navy.

I find the stories of how people got into the MN quite interesting, and look forward to hearing more, especially from people who voted 'other'.

[GuinnessMan]

It was a family tradition that i've now gone and buggered up by becoming an Engineer and not a deckie...

[penfold]

It's interesting to note already in this poll that careers advisors and recruitment fairs seems to feature fairly low.

I bucked the trend then; I attended a careers fair at GCNS(while unemployed and very disillusioned) and got spun a sufficiently convincing line by Ian Fraser that I applied to Clyde Marine to get on their Graduate Conversion scheme. The rest is history.

[CharlieDelta]

Combination of family and internet for me. Took a Stena Line ferry one evening, thought "hey, I could drive ships", went home and Googled it. My grandfather was MN so that helped.

[size4riggerboots]

I said friends in the MN, which is true, but I made those friends by working on a Tall Ship Started paying for the experience, and ended up getting paid to do what I loved! I get to go back to my roots in March, but as an Officer this time

[chris]

I voted other - I was talking to somebody at a party who was an marine engineer, a job which didn't appeal to me at the time, and 9 years later I wanted a career change from the investment sector (more holiday, sunshine and less sitting down) and googled marine engineering to see if it appealed and instead discovered a new role which was a much better skills fit for me, ETO.

So in summary a chance meeting with someone from the sector, boredom from office jobs and google.

[effiestephy]

I found a tiny little leaflet in my school, I unfolded it and it was just a long picture of the sea with a quote like 'broaden your horizons' or something. It then said something about becoming an engine, deck, or ETO officer, so I did a wee search online and found out about the merchant navy. I wanted to work at sea anyway after doing the tall ships race a while back, but everywhere was just books, magazines, leaflets, etc. about the Royal Navy in my school, it pissed me off a little.

[alistairuk]

I was looking for IT jobs after finishing uni and discovered a website offering cadet ships with p&o.