Don't Know What Land Job You Want To Do? Here Are 7 Ways to Figure It Out

When you’ve spent years working at sea, it’s hard to know where to begin when it comes to figuring out what job you can do on land. It’s not just about handing in your resignation and applying for something new, or opening a job website and scrolling, hoping that the job somehow appears. It’s about figuring out what that “something new” actually is. And that part? It can feel completely overwhelming. Because let’s be real, no one has taught you how to explore your job options in a way that makes sense for ship crew wanting to leave ship life and move to land.

So, let’s change that.

You don’t need to know exactly what job you want yet, and you certainly don’t need to figure out your entire land career today. What you need is a way to start narrowing down your options so the possibilities can start showing up for you.

The seven points below will help you look at what you need from a job on land and what you already bring with you from ships, so you can start turning “I have no idea what I could do” into real job choices.

1. Know Your Numbers: What Do You Need to Earn on Land?

Before you start thinking about job titles, get clear on what you need to earn. Life on land comes with expenses that may not have been part of your everyday life onboard, so work out what it will realistically cost you each month to live where you plan to live.

Think about housing, food, utilities, transport, subscriptions, membership, healthcare, debt, family responsibilities, savings and the things you still want to be able to enjoy. You’re not trying to decide your dream salary here. You’re figuring out the number your land life needs your job to support.

Also calculate a buffer - work out how much you will need to cover the first three months on land without an income. You may not realise how long the hiring process can take, even when you're successful, there can be several weeks between submitting your application, going through interviews and checks, receiving an offer and starting the job. Having money set aside gives you some breathing room to explore your options without financial pressure pushing you towards a job simply because you need money immediately.

2. Get Clear on Your Skillset

Knowing your skillset can help you discover jobs you may never have thought you could do. Your skills aren’t simply the tasks or duties you perform onboard; they’re the abilities underneath them that allow you to do those things well. For example, Shore Excursions Staff may coordinate tour departures, deliver port presentations and work with local tour operators, but underneath those responsibilities are skills in logistics, public speaking, relationship management, problem-solving, sales and communication.

And this is where your options can start to get much bigger. Those skills aren't restricted to Shore Excursions, ships, tourism or even hospitality - they can be valuable across completely different jobs and industries. Strong relationship management skills could take you into account management, public speaking could lead you towards training, and logistics and problem-solving could be valuable in events or operations. Suddenly, you’re not looking for the land version of a Shore Excursions job anymore.

Start thinking about the skills you are strongest at and where else those skills could take you. Once you can name what you're good at, you have far more ways to explore what you could do next. And if you're not sure what your skills are yet, my Stop Guessing Which Land Jobs You're Qualified For - Here's How to Find Out blog will help you uncover them.

3. Decide How You Want to Work

A job can sound perfect on paper and still be completely wrong for the life you want to live on land. Start by thinking about the practical things your job needs to allow. Do you have family responsibilities that mean you need certain days or hours free? How far can you realistically commute? Can you travel for work? Do you need to stay in one location? These aren't small details to figure out after you've chosen a career, they can help you narrow down which jobs are realistic for your life from the beginning.

And don't underestimate how important this is. You can enjoy the actual work and still be miserable with the way the job requires you to live. Imagine finding a role you love, only to discover that the hour-long commute each way is exhausting you, the weekend roster means you rarely see your family, or the remote job you thought you'd love leaves you missing being around people every day. After years of having the structure of ship life largely decided for you, moving to land gives you an opportunity to think much more deliberately about what can - and cannot - work for you.

Then think about how you like to work. Do you enjoy having a predictable routine or do you need variety to stay interested? Do you like a fast-paced environment with lots happening at once, or would you prefer something calmer where you can concentrate on one thing at a time? Perhaps you enjoy being physically active throughout your working day, or you're ready for a job where you're not constantly on your feet. The goal isn't to create a list of demands for your perfect job. It's to understand which working conditions help you do your best work, so when you start exploring your options, you can recognise the jobs that could genuinely fit you and your land life, not just your skillset.

4. Stop Using Your Ship Job Title to Search for Land Jobs

When you don't know what job you want on land, it's natural to open a job website and type in the title you already know; your ship job. The problem is that some onboard titles don't translate particularly well to land. Search for Sports Staff or Shore Excursions Staff, for example, and you may find very little that reflects what you can do. Other titles, like Bar Waiter or Retail Assistant, may return plenty of jobs, but what if you don't want to work in a bar or retail anymore? Searching by your current title can keep showing you more of what you've already done instead of helping you discover what else you could do.

So, use the search box differently. Instead of typing in your job title, experiment with the skills and functions you identified earlier. A Sports Staff member might search terms such as activity coordination, recreation programmes, group facilitation, community engagement or wellness. Someone from retail could explore visual merchandising, brand representation, product training, buying, account management or sales operations. And a Bar Waiter who doesn't want another bar job could try beverage training, brand ambassador, events, supplier relations, sales representative or inventory coordination. See what different searches bring up, and don't automatically restrict yourself to hospitality or tourism.

You're not searching this way because you already know what job you want, you're using the search box as a tool to discover jobs and industries you may never have thought to look for.

5. Ask Other People What They Think You're Good At

Sometimes the skills that come most naturally to you are the hardest ones to recognize because you've been using them for so long that they don't feel particularly special. Other people can often see those strengths much more clearly. Ask a few people who know you in different ways; perhaps a supervisor, colleague, someone you've trained or managed, a former crew member, or someone who knows you well on land:

“What do you think I'm really good at, and what have you seen me do that makes you say that?”

Pay particular attention to the why behind their answers. “You're great with people” doesn't tell you very much, but “You're really good at explaining things, new crew always come to you because you make complicated processes easy to understand” does. That could point towards strengths in training, communication, coaching or facilitation that you hadn't considered building a job around. You're not asking other people to choose your next career for you; you're using their perspective to uncover strengths you may be too close to see yourself.

6. What Interests You

This one might take a little longer, especially if you've spent years living and working onboard. When most of your working world has existed within the same ship environment, being asked “What would you love to do instead?” can be an incredibly difficult question to answer. So don't force yourself to come up with a passion or dream career. Instead, start paying attention to the little clues that tell you what interests you, what gives you energy, what you'd like more of, and even what you know you don't want anymore.

The things you dislike can give you clues too. For example, if you dread doing the end-of-voyage paperwork but love the time you spend talking with guests, that tells you something: you may be happier exploring roles that are more people-facing and less admin-heavy.

Those clues can show up anywhere. Scrolling social media and someone's work makes you stop and think, that looks interesting. Or home on vacation and a friend tells you about their job and one part of it makes you want to know more. Walking through your city and notice businesses, workplaces and jobs you've never really thought about before. Look around the ship too: maybe you don't want your manager's job, but you realise you'd love the opportunity to lead people; perhaps you watch another department giving presentations, organising events or working behind the scenes and think, I'd be good at that. Don't worry about turning any of these observations into a career yet. Just start noticing what gets a reaction from you.

Keep a note on your phone and add to it whenever something catches your attention. Over time, you might start seeing patterns that would be almost impossible to get by sitting in your cabin and demanding an answer to “What do I want to do next in my life?” You're collecting clues; you're not choosing your entire future.

7. Use Job Boards Backwards

By now, you know roughly what you need to earn, what skills you bring with you from ships, how you want your work to fit around your life on land, and some of the things that are starting to interest you. You may also have discovered strengths you hadn't recognised in yourself and started looking beyond your ship job title. You now have something you didn't have when you started: information you can actually use to explore your options.

Instead of opening a job website and searching for a job title you don't know yet, use what you've learned to work backwards. Set salary and location filters. Look at remote, hybrid or on-site roles depending on how you want to work. Search using the skills and functions you identified earlier, try industries that have caught your attention, and experiment with different combinations. Don't go in expecting to apply for anything yet, use the job board to investigate what actually exists. Open jobs you've never heard of. Read what they involve. Notice which ones make you curious enough to keep reading and which ones you immediately rule out.

And when you find a search that's bringing up interesting possibilities, save it and set up a job alert. Job alerts can introduce you to similar roles as new vacancies appear, including jobs that are slightly different from what you originally searched for and that you may never have thought of looking for yourself. Best of all, you don't have to remember to keep checking while you're busy onboard. The notifications come to you, so when you next check your email, you can open anything that catches your attention and keep learning about what's out there.

You may discover job titles you've never heard of, industries you've never considered, or roles you didn't know existed that fit far more of your requirements than you expected. You may also discover that an idea you thought would suit you doesn't work because the salary is too low, the jobs aren't available where you want to live, or the working conditions don't fit your life. That's useful information too.

Every time you learn what fits and what doesn't, the enormous world of land jobs gets a little smaller, and your question of “What should I do next?” now starts bringing in answers and possibilities.

You don't need to find the job today. You just need to start turning an enormous world of land jobs into a smaller group of real choices that make sense for you.