Kitchen Assistant CV Examples & Writing Guide

A word on titles first. Kitchen assistant, kitchen helper, kitchen hand and kitchen porter all describe roughly the same job. Kitchen porter and kitchen assistant are the usual words in the UK and Ireland, and kitchen hand in Australia; in the US you will mostly see prep cook, dishwasher or utility worker. Use the exact title from the advert at the top of your CV.

This sample is for someone with six years: school catering first, then a hotel banqueting kitchen, now prep and support in a busy casual dining restaurant. The name and the employers are invented.

Chefs hire kitchen assistants in a hurry, often because someone walked out mid-week. They are reading for four things and nothing else.

• Pace. Covers per service, plates through the pot wash, meals plated, guests at a banquet. A kitchen doing 300 covers on a Saturday is a different animal from one doing 60, and the chef needs to know which you have survived.
• Availability. Evenings, weekends, bank holidays, split shifts, short notice. This is the single most common reason a kitchen assistant gets hired over an equally good candidate, so put it in the header.
• Food safety. A current food hygiene certificate, temperature records, FIFO, allergen handling. Your kitchens' food hygiene ratings, if you know them, are the strongest proof you can give.
• Whether you stayed. Kitchen turnover is brutal. Eighteen months in one kitchen says more about you than a longer list of three-month jobs, so make the dates easy to read.

“I do not care about a career objective. Tell me how many covers you have worked, whether you can do Friday and Saturday nights, and whether you have a food hygiene certificate. If a CV answers those three in the top four lines, I call that person the same day.”

Two or three lines under your name. If you have kitchen experience, write a personal statement. If you do not, write a career objective that says what shifts you can work and what you already know. Both should mention your food hygiene certificate.

Almost every kitchen assistant CV says the same three things: assisted chefs, washed dishes, kept the kitchen clean. The chef wrote the advert those came from. Here are eight lines rewritten with the detail that gets you a trial shift.

Keep it to things a chef could test in ten minutes on a trial shift. Split them into kitchen work, food safety and the practical facts.

• Kitchen work: knife skills, portioning, butchering, peeling and chopping to spec, mise en place, working a prep list, plating support, salad and cold station, basic cooking (rice, pasta, stocks), fryer and grill support, bakery or pastry prep if you have it.

• Cleaning and equipment: commercial dishwasher, pot wash, double sinks, extraction filters, floor drains, chemical dilution and safe storage under COSHH, waste and recycling separation, grease trap procedure.

• Food safety: Level 2 Food Hygiene certificate, the 14 allergens and cross-contamination control, FIFO and date labelling, holding and cooling temperatures, temperature records, delivery checks, personal hygiene rules, sanitiser strength testing.

• Practical facts a chef needs: shift availability, own transport or how you get in at 11 p.m., lifting capacity, non-slip shoes, whether you can start immediately, and any second language you use in the kitchen.

Skip "hardworking" and "team player". Every applicant writes them and no chef has ever hired on them. A bullet saying you covered twenty short-notice shifts proves both without using either word.

This is one of the easiest jobs in the UK to get with no experience, as long as your CV answers the chef's real worries: can you stand for eight hours, will you turn up on a Saturday night, and will you be safe with food.

1. 1Get a Level 2 Food Hygiene and Safety certificate before you apply. It is not a legal licence, but most kitchens ask for it, the online course takes a couple of hours and costs very little, and having it already puts you ahead of half the applicants. Pick a course from a recognised training provider.
2. 2Write a two-line career objective instead of a personal statement: the shifts you can work, any paced physical work you have done, and that you are happy to start on the pot wash.
3. 3List any job that proves stamina and reliability: warehouse, cleaning, retail stockroom, farm work, labouring, care work. Give hours per shift and attendance.
4. 4Add a short "What I already know" block if your work history is thin: knife safety, food temperatures, cleaning chemicals, handling deliveries, cooking for a large family or a community event.
5. 5Say you are available for a trial shift. Almost every kitchen hires this way, and offering it removes the risk for the chef.
6. 6Print five copies and take them to kitchens between 3 and 4 p.m., which is the quiet hour between prep and service. Ask for the chef by name if you can find it.

• Level 2 Food Hygiene and Safety. UK law requires food handlers to be supervised and trained in food hygiene to suit their work rather than to carry a set card, and this certificate is how most kitchens show it. Take a course from a recognised provider and put the year on your CV.
• Allergen training. The Food Standards Agency runs free online allergen training, and Level 2 allergen awards are also available. Both cover the 14 allergens, are short, and make you noticeably more useful on a busy line.
• Level 3 Award in Supervising Food Safety. A step up, usually held by supervisors and chefs. Worth taking if you want to move up to commis chef or shift supervisor.
• If you trained abroad, for example with a US food handler card or ServSafe, list it with a plain line explaining it is a food hygiene course, then take the UK Level 2 as well.
• Employer training also counts: manual handling, COSHH, fire safety, first aid. List the year and the employer, not a grand-sounding title.

• One page, always. Half a page is fine for a first job.
• Availability goes in the header next to your phone number, not at the bottom.
• No photo, no date of birth, no marital status. That is the UK and US convention even though hospitality CVs from some countries include them.
• Plain single column with clear headings. Large restaurant groups and hotels run applications through hiring software, so avoid tables, icons and columns.
• Save as PDF and name the file with your name and "kitchen". Also keep a printed copy in your bag.
• Words worth mirroring from the advert: kitchen assistant, kitchen porter, KP, prep, commis, mise en place, FIFO, food hygiene, allergens, HACCP, banqueting, covers, pass, walk-in, deep clean, closing shift.
• Apply in person as well as online for independent restaurants. Between 3 and 4 p.m. you can hand it to a chef instead of an inbox, and that is still how most of these jobs are filled.