How to Write a Chef CV That Gets You Interviews

Your CV is the first thing a head chef or restaurant manager sees before they ever meet you. In most cases, it gets about fifteen seconds of attention — someone scans it, forms an impression, and either keeps reading or moves on. Most chef CVs are genuinely terrible. Walls of text, jobs listed back to a Saturday job at age sixteen, vague claims like "team player with a passion for food." That kind of CV does not get interviews.

The good news is that raising your CV above the average is not difficult. A few structural decisions, a different way of writing about your experience, and you will immediately stand out from the majority of candidates. This guide covers exactly what to do.

---

What Head Chefs Look For in a CV

Before you write a single line, understand what the person reading your CV actually wants to know.

Brevity. One page. No exceptions. A head chef reviewing applications during a quiet Tuesday afternoon service does not want to read two dense pages. If you cannot summarise your career on a single page, you have not edited enough.

Relevant experience. They want to know whether you have worked in kitchens like theirs. If you are applying to a Michelin two-star Nordic tasting menu restaurant, they want to see other fine dining experience. They are not interested in your gap year or your six months front of house.

Specific skills. Not "good knife skills" — that is the minimum requirement for working in a kitchen. They want to know if you can handle live service on a twelve-cover pass, whether you have worked with specific techniques, whether you have run a section independently.

No typos. A single spelling mistake signals carelessness. If you are careless with your CV, you will be careless in the kitchen. Proofread it. Then get someone else to proofread it.

Professional format. This does not mean elaborate. It means consistent fonts, clean layout, readable at a glance. Nothing artistic unless you are applying to a restaurant known for its visual identity.

---

The Ideal Chef CV Structure

Follow this order. Do not deviate from it unless you have a specific reason.

Name and Contact Information

Your full name at the top, large enough to be obvious. Below it: your email address, phone number, and city. You do not need your full street address. Make sure your email is professional — a Gmail with your name is fine; something you created at university is not.

If you are applying internationally, include your nationality and whether you require a visa. This saves everyone time.

Professional Summary

Two to three lines maximum. This is not an opportunity to express your passion for cooking. It is a quick snapshot: your current level, how long you have been cooking at that level, and one or two things that define your approach.

A useful format: "Chef de Partie with six years in fine dining kitchens across London and Copenhagen, specialising in fermentation and Nordic cold pantry. Currently seeking senior section roles at destination restaurants."

That tells the reader everything they need to filter you in or out in ten seconds.

Work Experience

List in reverse chronological order — most recent role first. For each position, include:

• Restaurant name and city
• Your exact role (not "kitchen staff" — be specific: Junior Sous Chef, CDP Hot Section)
• Dates (month and year, not just year)
• Two to three bullet points per role

The bullet points are where most CVs fall apart. Do not write what you were "responsible for." Write what you actually did, using action verbs.

Weak: Responsible for the meat section during evening service.

Strong: Ran the meat section independently for sixty-cover evening service, reducing pass times by 12% after restructuring mise en place workflow.

Weak: Responsible for pastry production.

Strong: Developed and executed twelve-course dessert tasting menu in collaboration with head chef, rotating seasonally.

You are showing what you contributed, not just listing a job description.

Skills

Be specific. "Team player" and "hard worker" communicate nothing — every applicant claims these. List actual technical skills:

• Techniques: wood-fire grilling, fermentation, cold process pastry, hydrodynamic extraction, live fire cookery, charcuterie
• Cuisines: Japanese kaiseki, French classical, New Nordic, Peruvian
• Certifications relevant to kitchens: WSET Level 2, food safety qualifications, allergen training
• Equipment: Alto-Shaam, Rational combi, Pacojet, cryovac — anything specialist

If the restaurant you are applying to uses a particular technique or ingredient philosophy, and you have relevant skills, lead with those.

Education and Certifications

Keep this short. Culinary school: name, location, years attended, qualification. Any formal certifications worth noting. If you trained under a notable chef in a structured programme, include it here. Do not pad this section.

Languages

This matters far more than most chefs realise, especially for international applications. List every language you speak and your level honestly. Even conversational French or basic Japanese signals to a hiring chef that you have the adaptability to work in an international kitchen.

---

What to Leave Out

A photo. Unless the application explicitly requests one, do not include it. It adds nothing and in some regions creates legal complications for the hiring side.

A personal statement longer than three lines. Anything beyond a concise professional summary reads as filler.

Unrelated work experience. Your bar job, retail work, or delivery driving from before you started cooking seriously. It takes up space and does not support your case. The exception: if you are early in your career and genuinely need the page length.

References. "References available on request" is redundant — of course they are. Do not list actual referee names and contact details on your CV either. They will ask when they need them.

Hobbies. Unless your hobby is directly relevant — you forage on weekends, you compete in culinary competitions — leave it out. "I enjoy travelling and trying new foods" is something every chef in the world could write.

---

Formatting Rules

Send as PDF. Always. A Word document can reformat itself when opened on a different operating system. A PDF looks exactly as you designed it, every time.

Use a clean font. Georgia, Garamond, or a simple sans-serif like Inter or Helvetica. Nothing decorative. Never Comic Sans.

One page maximum. If you have fifteen years of experience and your career genuinely does not fit on one page, select only the most relevant ten years. Earlier roles can be summarised in a single line: "2008–2014: junior positions across three London brasseries."

Consistent formatting throughout. If you bold restaurant names in one section, bold them in all sections. If you use bullet points for one role, use them for all roles. Inconsistency reads as lack of attention to detail.

Name your file correctly. FirstnameLastname-CV.pdf. Not CV.pdf. Not final-cv-v3.pdf. The hiring chef downloads twenty CVs and yours needs to be findable. Make it easy for them.

---

Common CV Mistakes

Listing every job since age sixteen. Your career progression tells a story. A kitchen porter job from a decade ago does not contribute to it.

Using "responsible for" instead of action verbs. Responsible for is passive and says nothing about your performance. Opened, developed, reduced, managed, led, improved — these show what you actually did.

Omitting dates or leaving unexplained gaps. Every employer wonders about gaps. A gap that corresponds to travel, further study, or personal circumstances is fine — note it briefly. A gap with no explanation creates suspicion.

Generic skills that apply to everyone. If your skills section reads like a template that any chef could have written, it will read that way to the hiring chef too.

Not updating it between applications. A CV that lists your current role with an end date of "present" but describes your responsibilities in the past tense suggests you copied a template and forgot to edit it.

---

Tailoring Your CV

One version of your CV sent to every restaurant is better than no CV, but it is not the right approach.

For fine dining applications, lead with your tasting menu experience, your knowledge of classical technique, and any formal training pedigree. For casual or contemporary restaurants, you might emphasise speed of service, volume, and innovation.

If the restaurant has a specific cuisine identity — a Japanese-influenced kitchen, a restaurant known for wood-fire cooking — move the most relevant skills and experience higher in your document. You are not changing facts; you are changing emphasis.

Research the restaurant before you apply. Look at their published menus, read interviews with their head chef, understand their service style. Then ask yourself: which parts of my CV speak directly to what they are building? Those parts go first.

---

A strong CV gets you to the conversation. The conversation gets you the job. If your CV is not generating responses, it is worth investing the time to fix it before sending more applications — not more applications with the same CV.

If you are applying to top kitchens, consider how you pair your CV with your cover letter. The two documents work together: the CV shows your credentials, the cover letter shows why this specific restaurant matters to you. Read our guide on how to write a cover letter for a restaurant job and the most common mistakes chefs make when applying.

When you are ready to start sending applications, Outreach Kitchen's tools can help you research restaurants and personalise your outreach at scale — so the quality of your application matches the quality of your CV.