How to write a CV for a chef role

What a head chef scans for first

A head chef or executive chef reading CVs between services does not read top to bottom. They look for three things in the first few seconds: what section you've run, what kind of kitchen you've worked in (volume, cuisine, standard), and whether your dates add up without unexplained gaps. If those three things aren't visible near the top of the page, the rest goes unread.

This is different from most office hiring, where a generalist recruiter reads the whole page before deciding anything. A chef hiring another chef already knows what they're looking for structurally — someone who can run larder, or has done pastry to a standard they trust, or has covered 120 covers a night without the pass backing up. Your CV needs to answer that in the vocabulary of the trade, not in the language of "team player" and "fast-paced environment," which every CV says and which tells a working chef nothing.

So the opening third of the page should state, plainly: your current or most recent role and section, the type of establishment (gastropub, fine dining, hotel banqueting, contract catering, high-volume casual), and roughly what volume you were working at. "Chef de Partie, sauce section, 80-seat à la carte restaurant, up to 150 covers a night" does more work than any summary paragraph.

Qualifications, certificates and registrations that belong here

Chef CVs have a specific, well-understood set of qualifications and certificates — list them explicitly rather than folding them into a vague "qualifications" line:

• Food hygiene certificates. Level 2 Food Safety and Hygiene for Catering is the baseline most UK kitchens expect from anyone handling food; Level 3 signals supervisory competence and is often expected for chef de partie and above. State the level and the awarding body if you have the certificate to hand (CIEH, Highfield, RSPH are the common ones) — "Level 2 Food Hygiene" alone is fine, but naming the body reads as more current.
• HACCP training. Separate from general food hygiene; if you've had specific HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points) training, or you've been the person responsible for a kitchen's HACCP records, say so — it matters more for senior roles and for anywhere with an EHO relationship to manage.
• Allergen awareness training. Since Natasha's Law tightened labelling requirements, kitchens expect chefs to be able to speak to allergen matrices confidently. If you've maintained an allergen matrix or trained junior staff on it, that's worth a line — it's a supervisory signal, not just a compliance tick.
• Formal culinary qualifications. NVQ/SVQ in Professional Cookery, City & Guilds 706/1 and 706/2 (older but still recognised), a catering diploma from a named college, or an apprenticeship — name the qualification and the level. If you trained under a chef or in a kitchen with a reputation (a name a hiring chef would recognise), that's sometimes worth more than the qualification itself, and it's fine to say so.
• Personal licence and food hygiene supervisor status matter more for chef-proprietors or head chefs with ordering and compliance responsibility than for a line cook, but if you hold one, put it where the relevant experience is, not in a certificates list at the bottom nobody reaches.

What doesn't belong: a DBS check is not routinely expected for chef roles unless you're catering in a school, hospital, or care setting, in which case say so specifically rather than listing it as a generic credential.

How chefs evidence experience — numbers, not adjectives

This is where most chef CVs go wrong. "Responsible for high-quality food in a busy kitchen" tells a hiring chef nothing they can use. The trade has its own units of evidence, and using them is what makes a CV read as written by someone who's actually stood at a pass:

• Covers per service. State the number — "up to 180 covers a la carte on a Saturday" is a real fact a head chef can weigh. Round numbers are fine; invented precision is not needed, but vagueness reads as inexperience.
• Section run and brigade size. "Ran the grill section, brigade of nine" or "sole chef, kitchen of two" tells a reader immediately what kind of environment you can operate in and whether you've had anyone under you.
• Menu involvement. Distinguish between executing someone else's menu, contributing dishes, and building a menu from scratch, including costing it. "Costed and wrote the autumn tasting menu, six courses" is a specific, checkable claim; "menu development" is not.
• GP management, wastage and stock control. If you've had ordering responsibility, held a GP (gross profit) percentage target, or run stock rotation and supplier relationships, this is what separates a chef de partie CV from a sous chef or head chef CV. Say what the target was and, if you know it, whether you hit it.
• Standard and recognition of the establishment, where it's genuine and checkable: AA Rosettes, a Michelin star or Bib Gourmand, a Food Standards Agency hygiene rating the kitchen held, or a well-known group name. These function as third-party evidence a hiring chef can weigh quickly — they do work that self-description can't.

References from chefs matter more here than in most trades, because the industry is small and reputations travel. If you can name a head chef as a reference who'll vouch for your section work, that's often more persuasive than another line of prose.

What chefs routinely leave off — and shouldn't

A few things come up again and again as absent from chef CVs, usually because they feel too basic to state or too awkward to mention:

• Availability for the actual shift pattern. Kitchens run split shifts, evenings, weekends and bank holidays as standard. If you're applying from outside hospitality hours-culture, or you have constraints (childcare, a second job, a commute that rules out late finishes), say what you can do rather than leaving a hiring manager to assume and find out at interview. If you have no constraints, a single line — "available for evenings, weekends and split shifts" — removes a filtering question before it's asked.
• Physical demands and how you've managed them, if relevant — long service periods on your feet, manual handling, heat. This isn't usually written down, and it doesn't need to be dwelt on, but if you've worked at pace for extended periods it's reasonable evidence of stamina worth a line rather than an assumption.
• Gaps explained in trade terms. A gap after a seasonal contract, a closed restaurant, or a stage (unpaid trial period) that didn't convert is completely normal in this industry and reads very differently from an unexplained six-month hole. A single line — "seasonal role, contract ended with restaurant closure" — closes the question before it's asked.
• Cuisine specificity. "European cuisine" is vague. "Modern British with a focus on game and foraged ingredients" or "classical French technique, sauce-led menus" tells a kitchen whether your training matches their food. If you've cross-trained across cuisines, list them rather than defaulting to the most recent.
• Staging and trial shifts. If you've done notable stages (trial shifts, sometimes unpaid, in a kitchen you weren't hired by) under recognised chefs or in recognised kitchens, this is CV-worthy experience in a way it wouldn't be in most other trades — it shows you've sought out and survived a specific standard.

What to do next

Go back through your CV and replace every adjective describing your kitchen or your work with a number or a name: covers, brigade size, section, standard (rosettes, hygiene rating, group name), and the qualification level with its awarding body. If a sentence would read the same on a CV for a different trade, rewrite it in the vocabulary above or cut it.

If you're sending the same CV to every advert regardless of section, cuisine, or volume, and hearing nothing back, that's often the actual problem — a CV built for a fine-dining sauce section rarely reads correctly for a high-volume contract catering role, even from the same chef. jobmarket.pro reads each advert in full and builds the application from your canonical profile against what that specific kitchen is asking for, rather than sending the same page everywhere.