Posts

Posted on

Ask Questions

Many questions you have going in to an interview will be answered during the course of it, but at some point you will most likely be asked if you have any additional questions. This is a great opportunity to not only reaffirm your interest in the company, but also demonstrate your focus on building a career within it and reiterate how well you match up to the position.

Even if you feel you already know all you need to know about the restaurant, hotel, or club you are interviewing with, it’s still a good idea to ask at least a few intelligent questions. Continue reading “Ask Questions”

Posted on

The Details – Your Email Address

The restaurant recruiters, managers and owners you send your information to are forming an image and opinion from everything they see about you, from the content, spelling and grammar in your cover letter and resume, to the email address you use to send it.

If you send your resume from something like,
“frothingatthemouth@somedomain.com“, “Budweiserchef@somedomain.com“, “cokehead@somedomain.com” or “Cookbunny@somedomain.com” (unfortunately, these are not invented – and there are worse), the perception of you as a hospitality professional could be diminished to some degree.

The time to let your personality express its self is at the interview, not in your initial communications or in your email address.

Think about it and then go get yourself real email address for your job search such as, “chefjohndoe@somedomain.com“, “janedoegeneralmanager@somedomain.com“, etc. Continue reading “The Details – Your Email Address”

Posted on

Proofread Your Resume

Your resume is your best first impression and indicates to employers among other things your attention to detail. Computers make it easy to create your resume and even easier to make typos, which don’t leave a good first impression.

A few tips will help you avoid submitting a flawed resume:

  1. Unless absolutely necessary, never send a resume out the same day you put it together. Sleep on your freshly written resume and then proofread it the next day. You will catch more errors this way.
  2. Read your resume backwards to check for mistakes. You will see them better.
  3. Have someone else read your resume with a red pencil checking spelling, grammar, dates, etc. Have them pay special attention to your contact information. This is one of the most common areas where jobseekers make a mistake. If the restaurant/hotel recruiter can’t contact you, you’re not going to get the job.
  4. Double check all technical terms – sous chef, garde manger, saucier, BOH, FOH, etc – to be sure that your word processor’s automatic correction mechanism hasn’t changed them to more standard terms like soup chef, garden manager, Bob, for, etc.

We’d like to say THANKS! to Jo Lynne Lockley of Chefs Professional Agency for contributing this tip.

Posted on

Hot Tip : Update Your Resume Yearly

Update your resume at least once a year whether you are looking for a new job or not.

Reviewing and updating your resume yearly gives you the opportunity to strip out past successes and add your most recent accomplishments while the details (i.e. numbers) and results are still fresh in your mind.

Even more importantly, it gives you the opportunity to evaluate and assess your progress in meeting your career goals and will help keep you focused and on target.

One last to reason do so is, as Jo Lynne Lockley of Chefs Professional Agency points out:

Sometimes fate smiles only for a second, and you will need to respond. For some reason this window always happens when you are in the middle of an 80 hour week. Having a good resume on file makes it possible for you to send your information without slogging through text your mind is too tired to take in. Anytime there is a change in your job status, do your resume changes within a week.