Testing the Job Market for Chefs and Food Service Professionals

Going to cooking school and getting a culinary arts degree are as much about the job market as they are about getting the kitchen skills and know-how in cuisine preparation. The final goal is JOB and a good one if at all possible.

Where Should You Look for a Chef’s Job or Kitchen Cook’s Job?

Building your chef career up through 2016 looks good. Take advantage of the fact that many more Americans are eating out. They want to sit down at a casual restaurant, pick up a menu that is both inspired, but accessible, with affordable prices attached. This isn’t fast food and it’s not fine dining, either. This is where you’ll see big opportunities especially if you’re looking for line cook or a job as kitchen worker.

Shop for a cooking or chef’s job at a fine restaurant in a metro area. Most major cities continue to boom in population and even when the economy nosedives most Americans continue to turn to food and drink. At the same time many large hotels and resorts will continue to run as scheduled and experience a natural turnover, which will in turn inspire new job openings.

Some of the best job opportunities for chefs exist in international cities where tourism and business continue to flourish. Go to school there and you might even have an opportunity to apprentice or transition directly to job right out of cooking school.

Culinary School Job Placement

Best advice: look for a culinary arts school that offers you career placement and assistance with preparing a chef’s resume and in fine-tuning your interviewing skills. Ask if your school has a measurable track record of job placement and if it maintains solid connections with local and national hospitality and restaurant corporations.

Use your chef externship or internship wisely. Great career connections may be forged and you might even be able to leverage a job off a good externship/apprenticeship experience.

4 Things to Keep in Mind when Job-Hunting for a Chef’s Position

1. Don’t be job-picky. You can try to avoid working at McDonald’s, of course, but when offered a chance to take a dishwashing job in a fine restaurant and you thumb your nose you could be missing out on one of the best parts of your career education. Many celebrity chefs started just this way—at the bottom.
2. Expect poor pay at first. Working as a cook, dishwasher, even busboy/girl is not a traditionally well-paying job and hopefully that wasn’t what drove you to choose a career as chef. If you’re a career-changer hopefully you’ve made plans to be drastically underpaid for awhile.
3. Learn whatever you can from your sous and executive chefs. If possible take jobs in restaurants that are well-known for training new chefs. You may have to do some research on a particular chef or restaurant for this strategy to work.
4. Imagine all the environments in which a chef or cook works and consider them all a possibility: high volume restaurants, regional bistros and cafes, corporate kitchens, catering, private chefs, institutions like hospitals, medical centers, and schools, fine restaurants, and hotels and resorts.