Airline: Emirates (EK).
Venue: Emirates Aviation College (EAC) Auditorium.
Location: Dubai, UAE.
Date: 7th September, 2005.
Age: 25.
Stage: Cabin Crew Graduation Ceremony.

You know how some applicants slip as seamlessly through the recruitment process as they slip into their dream airline’s perfectly-tailored, designer uniform — a clipped wing practically materialising on their interview lapel?

Yeah, that was not me. I’m behind that person.

According to everyone and everything, I am too quiet, too short, too awkward, too… me.

At thirteen, I hadn’t even outgrown my training bra when a personality test slapped a forever label on my forehead and told me, “Stop! You are an introvert, not suitable for Flight Attendant, and never will be.”

Even my friends gave me the bless-your-heart smirk and collective head tilt, saying I didn’t belong, because, amongst many other things, “Flight Attendants must be tall and pretty” and “have you looked in the mirror?”

And yet, I was selected to became Emirates Cabin Crew. But not until I’d endured nineteen interview failures. (Yes, nineteen, don’t look at me like that.)

One thing’s for sure, though, my uniform isn’t perfectly-tailored, but neither am I, and that’s okay, because I became one of the twelve ab-initios in batch 744 who made it through the grueling Flight Attendant training.

And whilst I was waiting around for that clipped wing to materialise on my lapel, I discovered Emirates don’t even award wings to female Cabin Crew.

Seeing my batch-mates smile as the presenter announces their names, brings back memories of my first ever interview at Virgin Atlantic, seven years earlier.

The recruiters called two names, and those applicants exited through the left door. The rest of us — thirteen in total — headed towards the right door.

Outside the interview room, our misguided faces wore those same confident smiles, convinced we were the successful group. We expected to be ushered towards a jet or the swimming pool. Instead, we were herded through the elimination door.

That Virgin interview became the first in a series of nineteen failures, capped by one walk-of-shame bailout — with more than a few interviews abandoned at the curb like dirty old cigarette butts.

Over seven years, I stared at Virgin’s elimination door so often, I memorised it down to its hinges and that blasted “pull to open” sign.

In the end, none of my blunders prevented my success. What almost prevented it was falling prey to the echo-chamber of industry myths and misinformation.

This is an industry where advice gets passed around like in-flight peanuts. And it’s alive with echo chambers — filled to the brim with hundreds of thousands of applicants, yet starved of honest feedback — so we’re at the mercy of old wives tales, faulty assumptions, and residual 20th century discrimination. Trouble is, the misinformation is peppered with just enough industry jargon and logic to sound credible.

Cue the unrelenting cycle of ambiguous feedback:

• “Better not mention your love of travel, sounds superficial.”
• “Watch out for that secret reach test.”
• “Oh, and every airline requires swimming, it’s an international FAA regulatory requirement.”

Too many applicants memorise answers, follow cheat-sheets, cultivate interview buddy systems, and dress like they already work there, hoping to outsmart the hiring process. And through nineteen failed interviews, I was one of them.

With no way to crosscheck or reality-check the claims, I followed all the so-called rules until I became paralysed by confusion and riddled with performance anxiety.

Instead of being me and pursuing my dream, my pursuit became about proving I could change. And I did change. I became a caricature.

At my nineteenth interview — an open day with Emirates — I walked into a banquet hall packed with over 100 applicants. It felt like stepping into a room of mirrors. A hundred versions of me, all clinging to the same stale advice. Everyone wore red. Everyone gave the same rehearsed answers.

We matched each other’s scripted smiles and over-eager hand raises. I watched it all unfold, again and again. Stunned to silence, this experience began to shape my perception. Then, I fell in sync with the Recruiters.

I self-ejected before the official eliminations, but this time I left with clarity.

I rushed home and used what the personality test labelled a handicap, my introverted nature, to research, study, and unpack the process like a combination lock.

I wrote about every one of my nineteen interviews, from Virgin, to CrossAir, to easyJet, to British Airways, and Emirates.

Over two-years, grinding my nose through annual reports and fiscal summaries I transformed bits of jargon into the ABCs and 123s of interview technique.

Through this process I began thinking like an airline.

Then I learned to behave like cabin crew and began crosschecking.

It turns out, so much of what everyone told me about this career and the recruitment process is wrong:

• Airlines don’t hire introverts? Wrong.
• Flight attendants must be tall and pretty? Wrong.
• Swimming regulations? Wrong.

My Emirates success defied so many of the Old Wives’ “rules”.

Instead, I stepped into the role and behaved like cabin crew.

Two months after my final interview, Emirates delivered on its promise to “Make Someone’s Day” and I jetted out to its Aviation College in Dubai.

You don’t have to “fit” some imagined, ideal mould to become cabin crew. Success isn’t about matching a template.

I hadn’t grown taller. I wasn’t any more extroverted. And I didn’t need to change my name to Cheryl.

And it’s not about being perfect either. In fact, the interview process is designed to force mistakes so Recruiters can see how you perform under pressure.

How about that? Mistakes are inevitable.

I succeeded against the industry’s notorious razor-thin odds, at a time when Emirates received over 125,000 applications a year. Not because I was perfect, far from it. If there was a way to mess up a psychometric test, I was the one handing it in. If there was a wrong way to sit down, I had the bruises on my knee to prove it. I messed up at nearly every stage along the way.

At my twentieth interview, I didn’t follow a single “must dress like you work there” grooming rule. I wore a powder blue, boys’ school uniform shirt with oversized collars sticking out. My waist-length hair, loose — bunless — and not a hint of Emirates’ signature red on me — not even an approved smidge of Clarins Passion-Red, lipstick.

If my appearance was skewed, you should have see the personality test I handed in. Misaligned answers, no eraser. So scruffy!

And if airlines only hire extroverts, I should have been the first eliminated because, during the group discussion, I wasn’t the most outspoken because two-dozen applicants erupted like a bird strike. When I finally managed to get a word in, another applicant started talking right over me mid-sentence.

By the time we came to the mini one-on-one’s, only 7 of the original 80 applicants remained — I was one of them.

But the blunders weren’t over.

My nervous knee collided with the Recruiter’s table so hard, she nearly called in the first-aider.

Two weeks later, I arrived for my final interview, and that same Recruiter took one look at me, drew a blank, and sent me home. I should have thrust my knee into the wall.

And then I had seven sets of photos rejected. Yes, seven. How is that even possible?

But none of that mattered.

I got the Golden Call, which, of course, I missed. And then I overlooked the Golden Email, so that grew stale in my inbox for 5 days — until Emirates HR made one final courtesy call.

What mattered then, and what matters now is alignment and authenticity.

That’s why some airlines, like Emirates, enforce strict dress codes for interviews — to strip away surface-level tricks. They want to see how you authentically handle yourself, not how good you are at following YouTube grooming tutorials.

So, if you find yourself in a room dressed like everyone else, how do you stand out?

You stand out by behaving like Cabin Crew and approaching the process as you would a simulated flight — because airlines don’t bring in desk-bound HR personnel with no operational experience to hire applicants.

Nope! They bring in seasoned professionals who know the job and the airline like the back of their gloved hands — Seniors, Pursers, former Flight Attendants, and Cabin Crew Trainers. AKA: Professional people-watchers, trained to spot dubious behaviour, including unsuitable applicants who recite memorised answers and wear fancy facades.

They don’t care about labels and quotas. They care about finding teammates who can improvise, adapt, and think on their feet, just like the job demands, and they have a vested interest in finding the right fit — not only for the airline and its corporate culture, but also for themselves because, one day, they might be bunking with you mid-flight, cross-checking your doors, and maybe sipping a coffee or cocktail with you in Paris.

That’s why airline recruitment doesn’t follow traditional formats. It’s a series of personality assessments, stress tests, and simulations, designed to strip you down to your instincts. This means, while you’re reciting your polished “I work well in a team” speech, recruiters are watching how you respond to the trembling applicant beside you — aka your teammate. And, because they are attuned to in-flight behaviours, how you handle that anxious teammate is reflective of how you might react to a nervous passenger in flight.