Table of Contents:
Chef Resume Sample
- Candidate has 9 years of experience
- Candidate has worked in notable restaurants and specializes in Southern food
- Candidate is capable of leading a team of kitchen staff, as well as ensure optimal dining service
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This MS Word Chef Resume
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Chef Resume (Text Version)
134 Common Street, New Orleans, LA 70112
(801) 342-5632
Professional Chef with 9 years of extensive experience in Southern Cuisine. Capable of managing dining services of up to 100 tables while managing and motivating staff to perform to best of abilities across every service. Consistently create new recipes and menus, implementing seasonal ingredients and modern techniques.
*To read more about how to write a Career Objective, click here.
CERTIFICATIONS
- 2014 Certified Executive Chef (CEC)
- 2010 Certified Sous Chef (CSC)
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
HERBSAINT New Orleans, LA
Executive Chef Nov 2010 – Present
- Managed daily kitchen operations with 8 staff members
- Re-developed entire menu in 2013, increasing sales revenue by 150%
- Oversaw food preparation and production, ensuring 100% food safety procedures were followed
- Interviewed, hired, trained, and directed all staff members since 2012, improving kitchen operational flow by 50%, while maintaining 100% employee retention since
- Developed process that reduced waste by 40% and improved supply turnover by 70%
- Referenced in “Top Chefs of 2013” magazine, published on Nov 2013
*To read more about how to write a targeted resume, click here.
THE RUM HOUSE New Orleans,LA Sous Chef May 2006 – Oct 2010
- Maintained an A rating with the Department of Health by standardizing cleaning procedures
- Mentored and trained four junior staff, improving performance by 20%
- Prepared meals for lunch and dining services with an average of 100 tables per day
- Managed relationships with vendors, negotiating prices of ingredients and equipment that resulted in 10% savings on budget
- Collaborated with Head Chef in menu design and innovative recipes
EDUCATION
SCOTTSDALE CULINARY INSTITUTE Scottsdale, AZ
Associates Degree in Culinary Arts May 2007
*To read more about how to write the Education Section, click here.
ADDITIONAL SKILLS
- Currently training in Latin American Cuisine
- Deep experience with Pastry & Baking
*To read more about how to write the Skills Section, click here.
Chef Resume Writing Tips
Certifications and Skills
The fastest way to boost your resume is to display your certifications, and consider what key skills you should emphasize on your resume. You should consider earning certifications if you don’t have any.
Learn.org has an excellent page that can help you decide which certifications you can earn, why, and how.
Certifications are only one piece of the resume puzzle — you also need to understand which key skills you should include, and how. We’ve created a helpful infographic for you to review, explaining important chef skills to include on your resume:
Chefs may seem to lead glamorous lives with the numerous cooking shows we find on TV. However to be a good chef, it not only requires a talented palate, but also leadership, organization, and hard work. Productive Chefs are able to find quality ingredients while managing their budget.
They can create new menus that will keep diners coming, as well as lead team members so that the kitchen can be a well-oiled machine.
They are reliable, flawlessly serving hungry customers on a daily basis, while ensuring that everyone in the kitchen is working in sync while following proper sanitary and food safety guidelines.
To the greatest extent possible, you need to come up with examples of these traits to show in your resume.
Here’s where to start:
1. Make the Career Summary your Opening
The Career Summary is designed to give the potential hiring manager a reason to continue reading your resume. The candidate in the sample above has succeeded with her Career Summary, for these reasons:
- She describes her years of experience as well as the kind of food that she specializes in
- She shows the scope of what she can handle by including how many tables she can serve
- She mentions her innovation and creativity in utilizing ingredients to create new menus
As you can see, she’s made a concise and persuasive argument for why she’d be a good candidate for the job. Now, the hiring manager seeing her resume will be intrigued, and look for evidence of her claims further in the resume.
2. Target your Professional Experience
Back up the claims you made in your Professional Profile with examples from your professional experience, listing them in a bullet format. Below, we’ve chosen the three strongest bullet points from the above sample resume for you to consider. We’ve also bolded the strongest parts of each bullet point:
- Re-developed entire menu in 2012, increasing sales revenue by 150%
The above bullet point proves that the candidate is able to create new dishes rather than just follow instructions by cooking the same thing over and over again. Not only that, the candidate is able to create new products that can attract more customers, and ultimately increase profits.
Here, the candidate showed that she has a mindset on ensuring that the restaurant can make money by not only providing great food, but also cutting costs whenever possible.
Notice how the sales increase is quantified — you should aim to provide numerical values describing your work experience as well.
- Developed process that reduced waste by 40% and improved supply turnover by 70%
As shown above, the chef’s ability to decrease waste, not only helps with the restaurant’s profits, but supports the environment.
- Managed relationships with vendors, negotiating prices of ingredients and equipment that resulted in 10% savings on budget
Here, the candidate showed that she has a mindset on ensuring that the restaurant can make money by not only providing great food, but also cutting costs whenever possible.
3. Use Action Verbs for a Punchy Resume
Each bullet point should start with an action verb — but which should you choose? We’ve created a list of common action verbs chef resumes tend to have — but you’re welcome to peruse ‘the longest action verb list in the universe’ if you’d like more choices.
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The key to writing a good resume is emphasizing your key strengths in a quantified manner. Be sure to give due diligence to researching your successes. As always, we recommend our resume builder, which provides automatically written bullet points and beautiful pre-made templates for you to use.
