Reputation of nationalities

[Unregistered]

Hi! My question is, when looking for a company where to do your cadet time, do companies take into account the nationality? I am from Spain and these last weeks I've heard some rumours about our bad reputation...
I guess is all officers are Norwegian they will prefer a Norwegian cadet because of the language, but, how about at ships with international crew? Do I have chances to find a good place or when they see "Spanish" they will burn my application???

[alistairuk]

Hi and welcome!

As for individual companies policies I do not know, however I can assure you that from a shipboard perspective most officers / crews / captains won't care what nationality you are providing your keen to learn and get stuck in.

As a cadet I never sailed with a british (or even European) officer and I got on with them fine. With my present company we mainly have UK cadets but from time to time we do have cadets from elsewhere in Europe (Germany, Portugal and Croatia being the ones I remember) - again none of us onboard really care where they are from as long as they're willing to learn / work.

At sea these days you are likely to be working with a mix of nationalities. Most nationalities (luckily for me) know English and on a lot of ships it is the "working language". On a side note I have found that the majority of Filipino officers / crew also speak Spanish fluently.

So in short, no I don't think nationality really has a major effect on wether companies will take you or not.

[laura]

Studies from the seafarer research centre in Cardiff show that where you have 3 or more nationalities onboard it usually isn't a problem but where you have two nationalities onboard it creates a weird us and them hierarchy onboard, think there was an article in Nautilus about this fairly recently and I'm totally in agreement. Some people may be idiots about your nationality, but that's what they are: idiots, there's good and bad folk from every corner of the world!

Saying that my company only definitely employs their trainees from their local area (not in the UK). My own experience says avoid ships where you'll be the only person of that nationality onboard ( if the others are onboard are only from two countries, if it's a mix it's less important), it's not easy being the middleman, and you'll find the use of English drops very quickly especially if you have one nationality with higher ranks and the other as ratings and so on. Saying that it's a very cheap way to learn a new language...

[Clanky]

Have you tried companies like Armas, Acciona, Pulmantur already?

I believe that Fred Olsen also have Spanish officers on their inter-island ferries in the canaries so they may employ Spanish cadets?

Suerte!