Create a Chef Resume With These Tips and Tricks

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Chef Resume Sample

If you’re thinking about becoming a chef, you’re in great company. Chefs are an important part of labor costs for a restaurant because it’s their phenomenal cooking creations that primarily bring individuals into the restaurant in the first place. That means there are always new chef job openings available but you must present a resume that makes you stand out from the competition. If you’re looking for the best resume, no matter where you’re applying for a chef position, here are a few tips.

What To Highlight In A Chef Resume?

Your chef resume should include plenty of information about your skills. Even if you do have a lot of work experience, your skills should reign supreme here because they are really what will set you apart from other job seekers. Some chefs become extremely well-known because they have specific skill sets that help them thrive. While your cooking is most important, you need to impress a hiring manager with a great resume first.

Chef Resume Example

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Structuring Your Chef Resume

Even if you use the ResumeNerd resume builder to create the best resume, understanding every section you create in your resume template is of the utmost importance. Here are the sections you’ll want to feature in a resume:

Contact information

The first section is your resume header. Here, you’ll add your full name, phone number, location, email address and links to your professional job networking profiles, such as your LinkedIn profile.

Resume summary or objective

Next is your resume summary or resume objective. This is a 2-3 sentence paragraph at the top of your resume. In a resume summary, you will highlight your most important experience and achievements as a chef. If you are just starting your chef career and lack work experience, you want to write a resume objective and state what you would like to accomplish in your career.

Skills

Skills are always going to be a big part of any resume, and a chef resume sample will often include many of these skills. Aside from general food preparation, which any chef will need to have some skills in, here are a few bullet points you might see in a skills section:

Fine dining experience
Food safety training
Understanding food cost and pricing
Menu creation and ongoing menu development
Multitasking
Meeting quality standards
Working with a restaurant manager
Time management skills
Working with kitchen equipment
Maintaining food quality
Grilling, sautéing, and other methods of cooking
General kitchen operations
Creating new menu items
Specific cooking techniques
Managing customer satisfaction
Fulfilling dietary requirements

You need both hard skills and soft skills to thrive as a professional chef. It’s not enough to just know how to cook. You also need to know how to work with the people you’ll see and work alongside every day.

Work history

In your work history section, you should include up to 10 years of experience from previous jobs. Here are a few chef job titles that might be beneficial to feature in your experience section:

General kitchen staff
Sous chef
Head chef
Executive chef
Pastry chef
Line cook

Of course, these different job titles vary depending on a chef’s experience level and years of culinary experience. On a resume, a sous chef job role might rely more heavily on non-cooking kitchen staff positions than an executive chef resume would. However, all of these positions have transferable skills that can teach you different lessons about food service.

Education

While some people working in a chef job only have high school experience, some pursue an education in the culinary arts and lean towards a role as a classical chef. Any related education, degrees, training or certifications should go in the education section of your resume.

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Do's and Don'ts

Include any staff members that you’ve mentored in the past. Chef positions are often very managerial and this can be a helpful component of a resume.
Mention the specific type of cuisine that you usually specialize in, such as Italian, American or Mediterranean. This can help a hiring manager recognize your specific skills.
Proofread your resume before you send it in. There’s nothing more embarrassing than having a hiring manager reject a resume just because it has a typo in it.

Discuss specific food items you’ve cooked in previous jobs. A general understanding of your cuisine is typically all that’s necessary.
Only cite cooking-related skills in your resume. Your cooking skills are important, but so are other skills you possess.
Talk poorly about previous employers. This can make an employer wonder how you might talk about them in the future.

FAQ: Chef Resume Example

Should I include a cover letter with my chef resume?

Yes. A cover letter is one of the most important parts of seeking a new job. Your cover letter allows you to talk directly to a recruiter, expand upon important elements of your resume and ask directly for the job interview. These are all elements you can’t include in your resume. If you don’t know how to create your cover letter, you can use the ResumeNerd cover letter builder instead.

Can I write a chef resume without much work experience?

Especially for some positions, you may not need lots of experience to become a chef. A professional resume may be able to highlight your skills and education instead of your work experience. The perfect resume for people with limited work experience is typically one that focuses on your knowledge rather than on your experience.

How can I apply to multiple jobs with my chef resume?

It’s important never to submit the same resume to more than one job. While following the same general resume format can be a good idea, you shouldn’t use the same resume more than once. The resume writing process should give you a new targeted resume for every job application. You can learn more about how to write a resume on the ResumeNerd website.

Create a Better Chef Resume With These Tips and Tricks