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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Create Your Culinary
Resume in 5 Easy Steps

  • Step 1: Add Contact Info

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  • Step 2: Include Work Experience Details

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  • Step 3: Provide Education Details

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  • Step 4: Select Your Skills

    Heading Resume Slide

  • Step 5: Fill in Your Background

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Get Expert Writing Recommendations for Your Culinary Resume

LiveCareer’s Resume Builder offers pre-written text suggestions throughout the resume writing process to make the writing process easier for you.

Our builder offers suggestions, written by certified resume writers, for ways to describe your job duties. Use our pre-written text as-is, or customize it to your needs. Here are three examples of content our builder might recommend for your culinary resume:

  • Washed, peeled, and cut various fruits and vegetables to prepare for serving.
  • Prevented cross-contamination from utensils, surfaces, and pans when cooking and plating meals for food allergy sufferers.
  • Monitored and controlled overhead and production costs with responsibility for profit and loss.

6 Do’s and Don’ts for Writing a Culinary Resume

  • Do choose the best culinary resume template. Which template you use will depend on your professional level and work environment. For conservative environments, like country clubs, choose a more buttoned up template. For a culinary role at a hot new nightclub, a more creative design will likely be welcome.
  • Do choose the resume format that best suits your needs. If you are highly experienced and want to show off your career progression, a chronological resume is best. If you are new to the industry, consider a functional or combination format which emphasizes skills and training over experience.
  • Do mention special training you have completed, such as sommelier training.
  • Don’t forget to add soft skills, like customer service, to your resume. Employers seek soft skills for all workers, even those who are in roles that aren’t customer-facing.
  • Don’t forget to study the job ad. While the culinary industry has skills and keywords that are common across roles, the job ad will offer clues to the specific criteria recruiters seek for that job title. For corporate culinary roles, this could be critical to getting your resume past an applicant tracking system and in front of a recruiter.
  • Don’t forget to add licensing information. If you have a current food handler’s license, for example, employers will take notice.

Beat the ATS with These Culinary Resume Skills

Writing a culinary resume that will get past an applicant tracking system (ATS) is critical to landing an interview for the job you want. ATS is the software that scans resumes for specific keywords related to the role. While smaller restaurants and bars likely aren’t using an ATS, corporate hotel and restaurant chains that hire in volume almost certainly will use them to weed out unqualified candidates.

To get your resume past the ATS and on to the desk of a human recruiter, it’s critical that you include relevant industry-specific keywords and study the job ad for the specific requirements of the job at hand.

When you use LiveCareer’s culinary resume examples, our builder will suggest skills that will help your resume get past this critical first step in the hiring process. Here are some skills to consider adding to your culinary resume:

  • Customer service experience
  • Conflict resolution
  • Kitchen management
  • Production control
  • Strong written and verbal communication
  • Creative plating
  • Experience using commercial kitchen equipment
  • Food safety training
  • Menu creation
  • Sourcing and ordering kitchen supplies and ingredients
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Culinary Resumes for Every Professional Level

Entry-Level
Knowledgeable Combo Prepcook Build my Resume

Prep Cook

Culinary job seekers with limited work experience might consider using a combination resume format, like the example below. The benefit is that this format allows those with less experience to use their valuable resume real estate – the top third of the document– to flaunt the skills and qualifications employers seek.

By moving the Work History section down, this resume example show employers sought-after qualifications right away, like strong cooking skills, food safety training, and an array of valuable soft skills.

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Mid-Career
Acclaimed Mid Chrono Chef Build my Resume

Chef

Experienced culinary job seekers want to show off both their work experience and their skill set. Here, the job seeker has chosen a chronological resume example, which accomplished both.

When reviewing her work history section, a recruiter can easily see that the applicant has worked her way up the ranks in restaurants, climbing from chef’s assistant to chef over the course of her career. Finally, in the last two sections, this resume deftly highlights the applicant’s skills and culinary training.

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Executive-Level
Exec Distinguished Chrono ExeChef Build my Resume

Executive Chef

At the executive level, job seekers should have impressive culinary experience to show of their resumes. For this reason, a culinary resume example that uses a chronological format is a great idea.

This format emphasizes the length of this applicant’s career and his breadth of experience above all else. It shows off an impressive career trajectory and makes it clear that he is highly trained and possesses the skill required to perform the duties required of an Executive Chef.

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More Culinary Resume Samples

Find resume examples for your desired culinary career. Get access to expert writing recommendations, do’s and don’ts and everything you need to write a perfect resume.

5 star chefbanquet chefbanquet cookbreakfast chefbreakfast cookbroiler chefbroiler cookburger king cookcashier cookcatering chefcdp chefchef de rangchef garde mangerchef ownerchef tournantchief culinary officercook cashiercook helpercook shift leadercookout fast foodcorporate executive chefcrew member cookdemi chefdemi chef de partiedirector of culinary servicesdish machine operator line cook prep utilitydishwasher garmache cook line cookdishwasher prep cookexecutive pastry chefexecutive task force cheffast food cookfry cookgarde manger chefgarmage cookgarmo cook fry cook banquet cookgrill cookhead cookKitchen Prep Cookolive garden line cookpantry cook wok cookpastry cookpizza cooksaute chefsue cheftaco bell cookteppanyaki chef

Resume Success Stories

Statistics and Facts About Culinary Jobs

Median Annual Pay by Job Title

Bakers$26,520
Cooks$25,200
Chefs and head cooks$48,460
0 25K 50K

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Job outlook by job title

Food service managers9%
Bakers8%
Cooks6%
Dieticians and Nutritionists15%
Chefs and head cooks10%
0% 10% 20%

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Education Statistics

Culinary Arts & Chef Training

  • $48,186

    Growing 5.3%

    Average Wage

  • 48,516

    Declining 8.96%

    People In Workforce

  • 37.2

    Declining 2.01%

    Average Employee Age

  • $3,516

    Declining 7.29%

    Median In-State Public Tuition

  • $21,800

    Declining 10.5%

    Median Out-Of-State Private Tuition

  • 18,693

    Declining 7.11%

    Total Degrees Awarded in 2016

Source: DataUSA

Industry Diversity Statistics

Race & Ethnicity by Degrees Awarded

White40%
Black or African American21%
Hispanic or Latino17%
Unknown12%
Asian3.8%
Two or More Races3%
Non-resident Alien1.8%
American Indian or Alaska1%
Native Hawaiian or Other0.8%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40%

Source: DataUSA

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