Cook Resume Examples [+Job Description and Objective]

Looking to write the three-course meal equivalent to a cook resume? Get your resume looking sharper than a freshly whetted knife with our guide.

Dominika Kowalska, CPRW

Certified Professional Resume Writer, Career Expert

Updated 05/11/2022

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Say you’ve been working in the same restaurant or bistro for plenty of time, and your manager can’t run the place very well. You’re tired, you’re annoyed, you need change. But…

For some reason, your resume just isn’t landing. Which is a shame, since the BLS projections show the job will surely see more demand in the coming years.

Well, wipe those onion-induced tears and pick yourself up! It’s time to get your cook resume up to 3-star Michelin standards!

In this guide, you will learn:

How to write an excellent cook resume, based on our example.
Several ways that will help your cook resume get you more interviews.
Tips on how best to show experience on a cook resume.
The most important skills on a cook resume that you need to implement to impress.

Want to save time and have your resume ready in 5 minutes? Try our resume builder. It’s fast and easy to use. Plus, you’ll get ready-made content to add with one click. See 20+ resume templates and create your resume here.

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Sample resume made with our builder—See more resume templates here.

One of our users, Nikos, had this to say:

[I used] a nice template I found on Zety. My resume is now one page long, not three. With the same stuff.

Interested in more? Check out our other guides below:

Cook Resume Example

Jonathan Arledge

Cook

1-212-893-7184

arledgejon@gmail.com

linkedin.com/in/arledgejonathan

Summary

Skilled cook with 2+ years’ experience. Extensive knowledge of food industry and its relation to the day-to-day busy kitchen restaurant setting. Very good attention to detail, both in cooking and inventory management. Effective at communicating with other staff, manager, and chef during 60+ guest rush hour.

Experience

Sous chef

Burgerzen, Raleigh, NC

September 2020 – Now

Supervised the preparation of dishes. Often managed a kitchen staff of 9.
Provided customers with five-star meals from a constantly perfected menu.
Served under the most recognized burger chef in the city (per Raleigh Daily’s food column). Got frequent praise and commendation for my work from my superior.
Received nearly daily compliments from clients on recipes personally introduced to the restaurant menu. Restaurant star rating increased from 4.3 to 4.7.

Key achievement: Pioneered a solution to prevent food waste in the restaurant, reducing monthly costs by roughly 12%.

Fast food cook

TacoShack, Charlotte, NC

January 2019 – August 2020

Prepared dishes in an utmost effective manner, according to both strict restaurant guidelines and customers’ dietary requests.
Onboarded of over 20 new staff members, including proper safety and sanitization training.
Cooperated with delivery services to ensure proper order dispatch (97% order correctness).

Education

Bachelor of Culinary Arts

North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC

2019

Skills

Intermediate cooking
Presentation
Adaptability
Multitasking
Communication
Taking inventory
Coordination
Planning ahead
Stress management

Interests

Running personal culinary blog with over 3,500 followers online
Frequent hosting of cook-offs among friends

Here’s how you go about writing a five-star cook resume:

1. Select the Optimal Format for your Cook Resume

A cook knows how to prepare several high-quality dishes at the same time at different workstations, garnish and serve food elegantly all the while maintaining proper workplace hygiene. The purpose of your cook resume is to show your multitasking abilities and cooking prowess.

That said—

How do you accomplish that quickly and efficiently?

In order to be successful, there arecertain resume formatting guidelines you can follow. So:

Include your contact information at the top of your resume.
Use the so-called chronological resume format. It’s a proven method of displaying your greatest qualities upfront and recruiters like it.
Use a clear resume font. Avoid clutter and above all, make sure your resume is reader-friendly.
Go for a simple resume template to enhance its readability.
Lastly, saving your resume in PDF is highly recommended in most cases. It preserves the formatting the way you intended it to be.

Volume-wise, the golden rule of keeping it to one page in length applies. Unless you’re literally Gordon Ramsay’s long lost sibling, you likely won’t need more.

2. Write a Cook Resume Objective or Resume Summary

Choosing the right resume profile is an important step. You can’t skip it, just like you wouldn’t skip the seasoning before serving a meal.

Simply put, a personal profile, is a way of presenting your biggest wins to show you’re exactly that one, perfect ingredient missing from their pantry.

Got experience? Great, it’s aresume summary for you. Display your greatest assets upfront and prove your worth with hard numbers and real accomplishments.

And if you’re just starting out, try aresume objective. Here, you showcase skills that can also apply to working as a cook (transferable skills). Accentuate what you know and how you think it makes you stand out among other applicants.

3. Write a Perfect Cook Resume Job Description

Sure, salt and pepper are staples. But you’re going to have to use a little more to show you’re a well-seasoned chef.

Here’s how to craft the perfect resume job description:

Lead off with your most recent work experience.
Make sure you include such information as your title, the name of the place you worked at, dates worked, and up to 6 bullet points.
Spice your cook job description up by stating some of your accomplishments. Don’t just list cook duties. Provide numbers to give your resume that extra oomph factor (use % or $ to show your impact).
Start each bullet point with an action word such as improved or directed.
Target your resume to the job ad. If they mention required years of experience, show you have them.

4. Polish Up Your Education Section in Your Cook Resume

Turn your education into a reason to hire you even if you didn't go to culinary school. Add:

school name and location
years in school
degree

And if you’re writing a resume with no experience, you can add some extras such as coursework and extracurriculars.

Have any cooking certifications? Highlight them in a separate “Certifications” resume section.

5. Include the Right Skills for a Cook Resume

Cooks need to be versatile. This applies to your skills portfolio as well. So state your technical, hard, and soft skills. Add anything in between that comes to mind, if it’s relevant.

Top Cook Resume Skills

Kitchen safety
Knowledge of food industry
Presentation
Sourcing quality produce
Multitasking
Food quality
Supplier relations
Training junior employees
Communication
Delegating tasks
Attention to detail
Teamwork
Active listening

Remember: Don’t copy-paste this list onto your resume. Instead, tailor it to the job ad. If the job ad mentions “collaboration” instead of “teamwork”, use “collaboration”. This way you will make your resume ATS-friendly.

When making a resume in our builder, drag & drop bullet points, skills, and auto-fill the boring stuff. Spell check? Check. Start building a professional resume template here for free.

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When you’re done, Zety’s resume builder will score your resume and tell you exactly how to make it better.

6. Add Other Sections to Your Cook Resume

If you want to land a cooking job, the best way to find one is to show your diversity. A varied skillset proves you’re a veteran chef in the kitchen.

Name the heading “Hobbies”, “Interests”, or “Other” and show your colors. According to studies, being passionate for your job is likely to increase performance. Who wouldn’t want that?

If you run a food blog, an Instagram cooking page, a YouTube channel—definitely include it in your resume. Your recruiters are bound to say “That’s some passion my restaurant could really use!”

Pro Tip: If you’ve won a cooking competition or completed specialized courses, don’t forget to include them!

7. Finish Your Resume off with a Cover Letter

No, don’t close the page just yet. Resume cover pages can be a bother, sure. After all, you don’t even know if your potential employer will open it. Some of them definitely don’t.

But a lot of them do. And that same lot is more likely to reject your resume outright if you don’t attach a cover letter. So don’t risk it.

To write a great cook cover letter, you can follow these steps:

Put some thought into a good cover letter layout.
Grab your reader’s attention in the first paragraph of your cover letter.
Use the middle of your cover letter to convey why you’re the missing link.
And for dessert, in your cover letter ending entice the recruiter even more and show your enthusiasm, or promise that your cooking will keep the customers coming back.

We recommend keeping the length of your cover letter at about half a page. See here for more of our general tips on writing cover letters!

Plus, a great cover letter that matches your resume will give you an advantage over other candidates. You can write it in our cover letter builder here. Here's what it may look like:

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See more cover letter templates and start writing.

Boom! You’re done.

This is how you write a great cook resume.

Got a few tricks up your own sleeve? Did we miss any of the 11 herbs and spices for a perfect cook resume? Let us know in the comments below!

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