Ready to brave the slopes?
Learn new skills, gain cultural experience and make new friends.
If snow sports are your passion, then you might want to fair your hand at a ski season. Chalet Hosting is the most popular thing to do, putting your cooking/cleaning skills to the test in exchange for ski pass/hire, accommodation and a liveable wage. Alternatively, if you back yourself as a true powder hound you could train to become a fully qualified Ski Instructor. Even if you’ve never skied before, why not give it a go? It’s a great chance to learn a new skill, meet new people and build your life experience with living and working abroad.
Chalet Hosting
What is Chalet Hosting?
Your role as a Chalet Host will usually involve cooking breakfast, afternoon tea and dinner for your guests. Additionally, you’ll be expected to turn out the beds and do some light cleaning daily with one big clean-up day a week. All your work will be in a pair or group which is a great way to meet some fellow daredevils. Just be warned, a Ski Season is the definition of ‘work hard-play hard.’ However, if you like the idea of waking up to fresh powder in the morning and taking the après by storm at night then read on.
How to get a Chalet Host Job?
The best advice for getting a hosting job is to start early, very early! You should start the process the January before season if you want to guarantee getting a good job. A great way to get ahead of the game is to do a season specific cookery course beforehand. While they are a tad on the pricey side, it’ll put you above the other applicants and when your boeuf bourguignon is rolling in the compliments (and tips!) you’ll be the one laughing. Orchards Cookery and Abinger Cookery School both offer specialist chalet host courses.
So, you’ve decided a season is for you, honed your cookery skills and are now ready to find a job, but how? There are four main ways to apply to Chalet Jobs and we suggest doing all of them, get a great CV together and start applying:
- Seasonaire Job Websites: Look at seasonaire job websites and fire off your CV to as many websites as possible.
- Email chalet companies directly: Even if a company is not advertising it doesn’t mean they aren’t recruiting. If they don’t have a job available, they might know someone who does or be able to put you on a waiting list. The key with this is to be persistent!
- Apply to an agency: A quick google search will reveal plenty of agencies, go have a browse!
Get social!
Lots of companies have social media pages where they post job advertisements, or you can join resort specific pages which will have multiple job offers in. Just remember when applying through social media, employers can look through your profile. Make sure your digital footprint is clean. (Have a quick look at Staying Safe Online for our guidelines)
So, you’re now ready to go and get your Chalet Host job, meet some friends for life, gain valuable cultural experience, ski every day and have an incredible time. Good Luck!
Ski Instructor
If you are an intermediate skier, (confident and consistent parallel turns on all runs and you have experience on easy off-piste.) you can opt to become a fully qualified ski instructor on your gap year. Although, having the mountains as your workspace doesn’t come cheap. You’re looking at paying in excess of £8,000 for the course, but a lot of the time this price includes accommodation, meals, ski pass and ski hire-just about everything except beer money! You also gain a qualification for life which can be used in years to come and will, on average, earn a higher wage than hosts. If this sounds like fun to you check out some of the links below: