How to Write a Chef Resume (with Examples)

Food can always make people happy.

A good chef takes on this responsibility by designing dishes, making the meals, and also managing the kitchen. A cook, while similar to a chef, usually has less professional culinary training and works under the chef’s direction.

Both roles require fine tastes, culinary training, and soft skills, such as kitchen management and the ability to work under pressure.

However, before you get to demonstrate your cooking skills, you first need a strong chef resume to catch the employer’s attention. Like cooking, writing a good chef resume takes great ingredients—content—and excellent crafting—writing—skills.

This guide will walk you through all the key tips for a job-winning chef resume and cook resume.

✨ 1. Use an ATS-friendly resume format.

With large numbers of chef resumes in the employer’s inbox, they might use ATS, a.k.a. applicant tracking systems, to manage the chef resumes. Most ATS are unable to recognize non-text content such as tables, charts, and progress bars. Try to avoid those elements and stick to simple texts for your chef resume.

✨ 2. Refer to chef resume examples and templates.

A good way to start is to learn from online chef resumes samples and cook resume samples. Pay attention to the words people use to describe their work experience and skills or the way they format their culinary resumes. 

✨ 3. Tailor your chef resume for the job position.

Not all chef positions are the same. Take notice of the types of cooks or chefs, be it a pastry chef, a sushi chef, or a restaurant cook, that are advertised in the posting.

Those chef resumes can look very different from each other. Study the job post closely and use the exact keywords mentioned in the job requirements.

✨ 4. Quantify results on your chef resume.

Describing your work performance in numbers is clearer and more credible than using adjectives.

The number of years of experience, the size of the team you managed, the customer satisfaction rate, and the revenue growth percentage are some popular examples of quantifiable data to include in a chef resume.

✨ 5. Share your certifications.

Professional culinary training is crucial for top chefs. Make sure you list the most well-known certifications you have on your chef resume, along with the year you obtained them.

A resume objective, or a career objective, is a short paragraph describing who you are and where you want to be as a culinary professional.

It is located at the top of your cook resume, meaning that it often determines whether the hiring manager will read through your full cook resume. 

Tips on how to write a memorable chef resume objective that catches the attention:

• Speak to the position: 
  Whether it’s your skills or your goals, make sure your chef resume objective is closely related to the position you’re applying for.
  
• Be specific: 
  General and vague objectives on a chef resume won’t stick to the hiring manager’s mind. Name the type of cuisine you excel in and the skills you are looking to develop. Try to be as specific as possible.
  
• Highlight your top strengths: 
  Think about the one thing that you’d like the recruiter to remember about you and put that in your cook resume objective.
  
• Describe your career goal: 
  End your cook resume objective with a brief statement of your career goal. Be sure that it fits the position!

If you have plenty of culinary experience, a chef resume summary would work better than a chef resume objective.

While a resume summary is also a short paragraph at the top of your chef resume, it focuses on your experience and achievements instead of career goals.

A good chef resume summary highlights the best part of your entire chef resume and makes hiring managers eager to learn more about you.

How to write a professional chef resume summary that makes employers’ eyes pop?

• Speak to the position: 
  Again, make sure everything you have in your chef resume summary matches the position. Including unrelated experiences might be considered unprofessional.
  
• Share your most impressive work results: 
  Look through your work experiences and pull out the most impressive ones with quantifiable results. Awards and well-known certificates are also great additions to your chef resume summary.
  
• Stick to 3-4 lines: 
  Although you might want to show off all your qualifications, remember that a chef resume summary should only be a summary. Only include the most eye-catching one and let employers learn more about you from the rest of your chef resume.

Employers are always looking for great skills. Compared to the work experience section, the skills section on your chef resume can show your qualification even more quickly and clearly. Don’t just dump a ton of bullet points though. 

A great chef resume skills section should:

• Fit the position: 
  Make sure you prioritize skills that are specifically mentioned in the job requirements. Those skills are what the employer is looking for.
  
  Consider adding some additional skills that are relevant to the position later if you still have some space on your culinary resume.
  
• Be clear and concise: 
  Bullet lists are the most common and simple format to display your culinary skills on the resume, but you can also adopt other formats to convey your skills more clearly.
  
  For example, you can add a brief description and make an expanded bullet list, or you can integrate your skills section with your work experience section.
  
  Either way, make sure your chef resume can concisely explain your skill sets. 
  
• Echo your work experience: 
  If you’ve only worked at Japanese restaurants, listing “Italian cuisine” in your cook resume skills section might not look credible. Make sure your skills and your work experience complement each other.

You’ve gone through some training, and now you’re ready to land a cook job. Because of the lack of professional experience, it’s perfectly normal to feel nervous and intimidated at the prospect of writing a cook resume.

But all great chefs start with no experience just like you.

To start off your career, you first need a good cook resume, even if you have no experience.

✏️ Advice 1: Choose the right resume format.

While a chronological resume format is common and widely accepted, it might not be the best format for a cook resume with no experience.

You can try a functional resume format where you focus on explaining your skillsets instead of work experience. You can also use a targeted resume format where you customize your entire cook resume for the position.

✏️ Advice 2: Include a career objective.

A cook's resume career objective focuses on the future instead of the past. You can make great use of this paragraph to showcase your personality and your passion for the job and the company.

Employers know that an entry-level cook resume won’t have rich experience. They simply want to see your potential and that you are willing to learn.

✏️ Advice 3: Highlight your education.

Although you don’t have professional experience, you perhaps have some relevant experience and training during your education.

Write down the kind of culinary training you received or the fact that you were a member of a student’s culinary club. Add some details to your cook resume education section.

✏️ Advice 4: Include your portfolio.

Showcase your dishes and recipes with a portfolio or a personal website. Whether it’s an Instagram page, a Pinterest board, or a Powerpoint file, remember to include a link to your works on your cook resume.

Let hiring managers know more about you.

✏️ Advice 5: Write a sincere cover letter.

A cover letter for a cook is another tool to showcase your passion and personality.

Talk about why you are interested in this particular restaurant. Talk about how you fell in love with food. Talk about how this job can help you become a great chef and how you can add value to the restaurant.

And make sure you customize your cook or chef cover letter for each position.