Chef CV Example
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A chef's CV needs to answer two questions immediately: which cuisine you know, and how many covers you push through a service. "Chef" alone isn't enough — Italian is a different kitchen from Levantine, and a hundred-cover restaurant is a different job from a four-hundred-cover one.
Copy-ready professional summary
Copy it, then swap the numbers and details for your own.
Chef with eight years in Levantine and Mediterranean cuisine, running the hot section in a restaurant serving around 300 covers a day. Supervise a team of six and manage food cost, having cut wastage by 22%. HACCP food safety certified.
Skills employers look for
- Levantine and Mediterranean cuisine
- Hot section management and service organisation
- HACCP food safety certification
- Cost control and waste reduction
- Menu and recipe development
- Supervising and training kitchen staff
Ready-made experience bullets
Replace anything in brackets with your own details, and keep the numbers — they're what sets your CV apart.
- Ran the hot section in a restaurant serving around 300 covers a day.
- Supervised a team of six chefs and trained them on presentation standards.
- Cut food wastage by 22% through portion control and improved storage.
- Developed 15 new dishes added to the seasonal menu.
Education
Culinary arts diploma or accredited vocational training, with current food safety certification.
ATS keywords
Include these terms exactly as written — applicant tracking systems match on literal text.
- Levantine cuisine
- HACCP
- food safety
- kitchen management
- cost control
- menu development
Tips specific to this role
State the cuisine and the covers
"Levantine cuisine, 300 covers a day" tells a head chef your level in one line. Together those two figures define which restaurants suit you.
Food safety certification is mandatory
HACCP or equivalent is a legal requirement in most establishments. List it with its expiry date in both your skills and your summary.
Waste and cost are management language
A chef who cites reduced wastage or controlled plate cost is speaking the owner's language, not just the kitchen's — and that's what puts you up for a bigger role.
Licences and certificates employers ask for
Name in full any you hold, with the number where there is one — many postings screen on these.
- A food safety certificate — in practice the first requirement, and many employers will not let you in the kitchen without one.
- HACCP — hazard analysis, asked for specifically by hotels and large operations.
- A current health certificate — purely administrative, but its absence stops a contract.
- A culinary diploma if you have one — not required by most restaurants, but it counts in hotels.
- Cost control or inventory management training — rare among chefs, and the thing that marks you for supervision.
Mistakes specific to this role's CV
- Listing dishes instead of responsibilities. The menu you can cook matters less than the covers you can push through a service.
- Omitting kitchen size. Seat count, covers per service, the size of the brigade you ran — numbers a head chef reads instantly.
- Not naming the cuisine precisely. "General cooking" is a dead phrase; "Levantine, Lebanese and grills" matches the posting.
- Hiding cost control. A chef who cuts waste and holds food cost percentage is worth more than one who only cooks.
- Not stating food safety explicitly. Name the certificate, and the last inspection result if it was good.
- Ignoring service pressure. Running the peak hour is a skill you will certainly be asked about.
Questions that come up in this role's interviews
Prepare an example from your own work for each — a generic answer is what every other applicant gives.
How many covers do you push in one service?
The number a chef sizes you up with immediately. Give it with the restaurant type and how many cooks were with you — 200 covers with a brigade of three is not 200 with ten.
What do you do when a dish comes back from the floor?
Do not defend. The right answer: check why it came back, refire immediately with priority, then look at whether the fault repeats and fix the cause rather than the plate.
How do you reduce waste?
The question that separates candidates. Name specific practice: first-in-first-out storage, daily counts on perishables, portion sizing, using trim in stock or the daily special.
What if a key ingredient runs out mid-service?
They are measuring composure and order: tell the floor at once so the dish comes off, then the substitute if there is one, then log the shortage for purchasing — not carrying on as though nothing happened.
What is HACCP, briefly?
Do not recite the definition. Say what you do in practice: critical control points, temperature logs, separating raw from cooked, dating and documentation — and say whether you were the one signing those logs.
Where this job leads
The kitchen is one of the clearest hierarchies there is: commis to cook to chef de partie to sous chef to executive chef. The hard step is not about cooking — moving from chef de partie to sous chef means being asked for cost control, scheduling and inventory rather than food. Which is why a cook who learns the numbers early is promoted faster than a better cook who does not.