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Chef Resume: Examples and Tips
A chef is at the heart of a restaurant, preparing meals, developing new dishes and menus, and guiding the overall direction of the kitchen. Chefs must also manage and mentor subordinates, and collaborate with restaurant marketing and sales teams to keep up with food trends and cooking styles.
Keep these tips and examples in mind to create the perfect resume, helping you move forward in your culinary career.
Table of Contents
Featured Resume Example: Chef
PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY
Accomplished Chef with 13 years of comprehensive experience working in food service industry. Adept atstrictly monitoring kitchen activities and meeting health code standards. Specialties in Italian and Americancuisine. Strong organizational, leadership and management skills. Ready for new challenge creating tastymeals for successful establishment.
WORK HISTORY
- Developed and cooked exciting, memorable dishes that brought new customers into establishment andbolstered restaurant revenues to .5 million per year.
- Mentored more than 10 kitchen staff at all levels to prepare each for demanding roles.
- Spearheaded menu planning, recipe development and day-today management for two locations, aswell as catering operations
- Hired, trained and managed all kitchen staff, including employee development, issuing disciplinaryaction and conducting performance reviews
- Planned promotional menu additions based on seasonal pricing and product availability
- Introduced new market items and spearheaded production of highly popular Sunday brunch generatingan increase of 15% in monthly revenue.
- Assisted with the development of full, tasting, and special events menus to meet all establishmentneeds and maintain strong customer levels.
- Plated every dish with attractive flair to meet strict restaurant standards and maintain stellar businessreputation
- Acted as head chef when required to maintain continuity of service and quality.
SKILLS
- Recipes and menu planning
- Signature dish creation
- Fine-dining expertise
- Specialty in Italian food
- Team leadership
- Operations management
- Effective communications
- Quality standards
EDUCATION
Top 4 Characteristics of a Best-in-class Chef Resume
- Summary The summary should provide a quick scan of the work experiences, qualifications and skill sets that make you stand out. In a few short sentences, describe your relevant skills, as well as accomplishments achieved in the culinary field, such as recognition in a restaurant review, being featured in a cooking blog or as a judge on a cooking contest panel.
- Skills Mention your specific cooking expertise alongside soft skills that are necessary for a chef role, such as efficiency and reliability in delivering meals, communicating with customers, and being adept at issue resolution. If you specialize in a certain cuisine or cooking style, such as “pastries,” “baking,” “desserts,” “Italian” or “Chinese” provide details on your particular skills in those areas (e.g., “Specializing in Hunan Chinese cuisine”).
- Work history Keep your work history list to the last ten years, and focus on achievements rather than standard daily tasks. Any awards or recognition you’ve received in previous gigs should be mentioned, such as “Featured in ABC City News’ ‘Top 10 Restaurant Chefs Across the State’ list” while creating your resume.
- Education Most chef roles require a bachelor’s degree in culinary arts or an equivalent course, depending on your specialization. Be sure to include any additional courses you’ve taken (e.g., baking, pastry) or any certifications you’ve gained (e.g., Certified Personal Chef), including the institutions where you’ve had these studies.
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Find the Right Template for Your Resume
To create a professional resume that also clearly displays your credentials, use these templates, or choose from our complete templates list.
Contempo
This resume layout uses color for section headers, drawing attention to each vital piece of information on your resume.
Esteemed
This template’s attention-catching design literally “connects the dots” from your professional summary to your skills section. Each section heading gets a color font, making your document a breeze to scan.
Knowledgeable
This template uses simple shaded headers to differentiate each section, effectively organizing your details.
For more free resume designs you can customize, visit our resume templates page.
Do’s and Don’ts for Creating Your Resume
- DO make sure your resume isn’t too long or verbose Employers take a few seconds to glance through a resume — make those seconds count by not weighing it down with excessive amounts of information. Focus on skills and experiences that most directly connect to the position you’re applying for, and do away with explaining mundane tasks in previous jobs, or mentioning activities or skills that don’t apply to the new job.
- DO remember to proofread your resume before you submit it Punctuation, grammar or accuracy errors in a resume can leave a negative impression on hiring managers. Take the time to use a spell checker and re-read your resume, making sure all your details are correct and address the requirements of the job.
- DO build different resumes for different job openings No job is exactly the same as another; even two chef jobs will have different requirements. Get in the habit of creating different versions of your resume for different job openings, adjusting your summary, skills and work experience sections to best fit the particular job. For example, for a job that lists “experience in a food preparation position” as a major requirement, highlight your own experiences with food preparation in your resume: “Hard-working chef with three years’ experience with all phases of food preparation and kitchen operation.”
- DON’T forget to include industry-relevant soft skills Being a chef isn’t just about dazzling cooking techniques — it’s also about the intangible skills you bring to the table, such as being able to handle customers and work alongside other restaurant employees. Include soft skills such as time management, excellent communication skills and the ability to multitask.
- DON’T overlook impact verbs Chefs should demonstrate leadership and proactive management, and one way to get this across in your resume is to use strong action verbs. These verbs will energize your achievements and place you at the center of your own success. For instance, “Managed a restaurant that earned recognition in national cooking blog” leaves a better impression than “Was chef in restaurant that gained recognition in national cooking blog”. Use words like “managed,” “delegated” and “assigned” to give your resume a more persuasive edge.
- DON’T forget to list extra certifications that relate to the job For instance, a certification in business management might not seem to relate with a chef role, but such training could be a plus when it comes to assisting with restaurant management. Internship experiences and accomplishments are also worth mentioning, as they indicate your ability to learn on the job.
Chef Resume FAQs
- 1. What are skills a chef must have?
- 2. Should your resume be in a chronological or functional format?
- 3. How can keywords be incorporated in my resume?
- 4. How should you tailor a resume for a chef role?
- 5. How should you craft your resume if you are looking to take the next step forward in your career?
1. What are skills a chef must have?
The following practical and soft skills should be considered for your resume:
| Practical skills: | Soft skills: |
| Planning and directing meals and menus | Handling stressful situations |
| Creating meals and dishes of quality standards | Team player |
| Estimating food requirements and costs | Adaptable to innovation |
| Supervising kitchen staff and activities | Prompt and dedicated to workr |
| Excellent presentational skills | Leadership |
| Complying with nutrition, sanitation regulations, and safety standards | Excellent communication and interpersonal skills |
| Practical skills: |
| Planning and directing meals and menus |
| Creating meals and dishes of quality standards |
| Estimating food requirements and costs |
| Supervising kitchen staff and activities |
| Excellent presentational skills |
| Complying with nutrition, sanitation regulations, and safety standards |
| Soft skills: |
| Handling stressful situations |
| Team player |
| Adaptable to innovation |
| Prompt and dedicated to workr |
| Leadership |
| Excellent communication and interpersonal skills |
2. Should your resume be in a chronological or functional format?
Use a chronological format if you have plenty of work experience you can feature. A functional format may be appropriate for chef jobs that don’t require much prior experience, and also allows you to provide a detailed rundown of all your skills.
3. How can keywords be incorporated in my resume?
Take the time to review the job description and note important phrases such as “coordinates buffet presentations” “food quality assurance” or “excellent pastry skills.” Match these phrases with your own abilities and experiences where you can, and include them throughout your resume, using your work achievements to tell the story of how you’ve used your skills. For example: “Coordinated buffet presentations for groups of 200+ on a weekly basis”
4. How should you tailor a resume for a chef role?
In addition to using the sample resumes on this page as a guide, look to chef job descriptions and take note of specific skills and qualifications employers usually require — cleaning and sanitizing food preparation areas, being flexible in shifting working conditions, or assisting other chefs in placing of meat, fish and produce orders, for instance. Then match these requirements with your own skills and work history where you can, using the major components of your resume — summary, skills and work history sections — to tell the story of your career, showing you have both the experience and aptitude to fulfill the job requirements. As mentioned above, you should create different versions of your resume to target different jobs.
5. How should you craft your resume if you are looking to take the next step forward in your career?
The next step after becoming a chef is usually moving up to a head or executive chef position. To achieve this, look to
- Become more familiar with restaurant operations, including menu updates and programs to help increase customer satisfaction and revenue.
- Gain experiences that show you can handle a managerial role with more responsibilities, such as coordinating or mentoring a larger team, or being more involved in menu creation.
- Find opportunities to show off your ability to perfect and create new, successful dishes that lead to increased profits and positive customer reviews on sites like Yelp and Tripadvisor.
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