On Your Last Contract? Don't Leave Without Doing These 2 Things

When you know you're on your final contract, it's very easy for the countdown to take over. Three months to go. Two months. Six weeks. Three more turnarounds. Two more crew drills. One more itinerary. You're looking forward to whatever comes next, and understandably, a lot of your attention starts moving towards land. You might be thinking about where you're going to live, what you're going to do for work, what it will feel like to finally have your weekends back, or simply what life is going to look like when you don't have another joining date sitting somewhere in your future. But before you get there, there is something worth recognising about the position you're in right now.

Your final contract gives you a window of opportunity that closes when you leave.

There are plenty of things you can figure out once you're home. You can research jobs, make decisions, change plans and work out what your new routine is going to look like.

But there are other things that are much easier to do while you're still onboard, surrounded by the people, systems, records and relationships that have been part of your shipboard career. And there are some parts of ship life that, once you've left for the final time, you simply can't come back and experience in quite the same way again.

So rather than giving you an enormous checklist of everything you should have figured out before you leave ships, I want to focus on two things.

Take what you need from your ship career professionally.
And take what you need from ship life personally.

1. Take What You Need From Your Ship Career Professionally

While you're still onboard, you have access to something that will become considerably less convenient once you leave: the people and systems that can verify the career you've just had 

Your managers and supervisors are there. The Crew Office or HR department is there. Your employment records are accessible. The people who have watched you work are still around you.

Use that access while you have it.

Start with your references. Think about the managers or supervisors who know your work well and who you would feel comfortable asking to act as a reference when you start applying for jobs on land. If they know you're leaving, ask them before you go and make sure you have contact details that will still work once one or both of you have moved on from that ship.

Connect with them on LinkedIn as well. Ships have a wonderful habit of scattering people all over the world. The manager sitting two offices away from you today could be on another ship, with another company or back on land six months from now.  

Then take a trip to the Crew Office or HR and find out what employment documentation you can take with you.  Ask for a Record of Employment showing your exact positions and dates and get copies of your recent performance appraisals if they're available to you. If possible, keep electronic copies as well as anything you're given on paper. It's also worth asking who a future employer should contact if they need to verify your employment with the cruise line.

These aren't particularly exciting things to organise, especially when you're in the final stretch of a contract, but there is a very good reason for doing them before you leave.

Don't assume your cruise line's normal offboarding process is going to give you everything you'll need later.

Depending on the company, when a future employer asks for a reference or employment verification, they may be directed to a shoreside HR department. That might be perfectly adequate for confirming that you worked for the company, your position and your employment dates, but the person responding may never have met you, worked with you or seen how you performed in your role.  

That's very different from having the contact details of a manager who worked alongside you and can genuinely speak about you and your work.

There's also the information sitting inside your crew profile now.

While you're employed, you may be able to access employment records, previous positions, performance appraisals and other information connected to your career with that company. Once you resign, don't assume you'll continue to have access to those systems indefinitely. Your crew profile will eventually be deactivated, and information that was once sitting right there in front of you may no longer be accessible to you at all.

Also that's why I wouldn't leave this until your final three days either, when you're packing your cabin, returning everything that doesn't belong to you, closing accounts, trying to say goodbye to everyone and wondering how your suitcase has somehow gained another 7 kilos since you joined.

Give yourself time to find out what your cruise line provides when you leave, what you can download or request before your access disappears, and who you want to remain connected with professionally.

As six months from now, trying to get hold of an appraisal might mean finding the correct shoreside department and hoping the record is still available. Finding a manager who can give you a meaningful reference might mean discovering they've changed ships, changed companies or are somewhere in the middle of the Pacific.

Right now, your appraisal might be sitting in your crew profile.

Your manager might be two decks away.

HR might be at the end of the corridor.

That's the window of opportunity.

And if you're reading this thinking, But nobody onboard knows this is my last contract, this part still applies to you. You don't need to announce that you're leaving the company in order to start getting these things in place. Connect with your managers and supervisors on LinkedIn because you're building your professional network. Ask for copies of documents you're entitled to have for your own records. Save the information you already have access to. If someone asks why you want something and you're not ready to share your plans, think beforehand about how you want to answer. You don't need to turn an ordinary “Hey, are you on LinkedIn? Let's connect” into something that sounds like a farewell. The point is simply to make sure that when you do eventually resign, you haven't left everything you might need sitting onboard with the people and systems you no longer have easy access to.

2. Take What You Need From Ship Life Personally

There's another part of your final contract that you won't be able to come back to later….actually leaving ships for good. 

If you've worked on ships for any length of time, you've probably signed off more times than you can remember. You've packed the cabin, said goodbye, walked down the gangway, travelled home and slipped very quickly into vacation mode.

But there was always another contract.

Another ship. Another joining date. Another cabin. Another turnaround day. Another time you'd put the uniform on and go back to work.

Your final contract is different because eventually you'll start noticing that some very ordinary things aren't going to happen again.

Your last crew drill.
Your last turnaround day.
Your last sailaway.

The last time you walk a route through the ship that you've walked hundreds of times without thinking about it.

The last time you sit with certain people in the crew mess, have a drink in the crew bar, complain about something ridiculous that's happened that day or walk back onboard after a few hours ashore.

And that's why I think there's something important to remember during those final weeks:

Don't confuse counting down with saying goodbye.

Counting down keeps your attention on what comes next. You're watching the number get smaller because you're ready to go.

Saying goodbye asks you to look around while you're still there.

That doesn't mean you need to suddenly become sentimental about every corridor or create some grand ceremonial farewell to ship life. You may be completely ready to leave. You might have been ready for quite some time.  It simply means recognising that something which has been your normal life is about to become part of your history.

So. take the photos you've always assumed you could take another time. Not only the beautiful port photos you've probably collected for years, but photos of your actual life onboard. Get a photo of yourself doing your job. Take one in your uniform. Take a photo of your cabin before you dismantle it for the last time. Take photos with the people who have been part of your everyday life.

Spend time with the people who genuinely matter to you, go to your favorite place onboard or have one more drink somewhere you spent far too much time over the years. If there's a port that has become part of your ship life, go ashore and enjoy it rather than assuming there will always be another itinerary.

And notice some of the completely ordinary things too.
Because those may be the things that surprise you later.

Once you're living on land, you'll still be able to look at photographs and talk to old shipmates. You'll still have the stories. But you won't be able to come back six months later and decide you'd like to experience your final contract properly this time.

That window will have closed.

 Use the Window While It's Still Open

There are hundreds of things you could put on a final-contract checklist, and what you need to organise will depend on the life you're going back to and how much preparation you've already done.  Some of it can wait.  These two things shouldn't.

Right now, you're still inside the career you're about to leave. You still have access to the people who worked alongside you, the managers who saw what you were capable of, the systems that hold the records of your career and the shipboard world that has been part of your everyday life.

Soon, you won't.
So, while the countdown is running, use it.
Get the things you'll need from your career while they're still within reach.
Be present for the things you'll want to remember while they're still happening.

Then, when the day finally comes and you walk down the gangway for the last time, you can keep looking forward.

 You've taken what you needed with you.