Kitchen Assistant Resume 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 hand are the usual words in the UK, Ireland and Australia; in the US you will mostly see kitchen assistant, prep cook, dishwasher or utility worker. Use the exact title from the posting at the top of your resume.

This sample is for someone with six years: school catering first, then a hotel banquet 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 dish pit, 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. Nights, weekends, 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 handler card, temperature logs, FIFO, allergen handling. Health inspection results, 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 handler card. If a resume 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 summary. If you do not, write an objective that says what shifts you can work and what you already know. Both should mention your food handler card.

Almost every kitchen assistant resume says the same three things: assisted chefs, washed dishes, kept the kitchen clean. The chef wrote the posting 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 dish machine, pot wash, three-compartment sink, hood filters, floor drains, chemical dilution and safe storage, waste and recycling separation, grease trap procedure.

• Food safety: food handler card, allergen handling and cross-contamination control, FIFO and date labeling, holding and cooling temperatures, temperature logs, delivery checks, personal hygiene rules, sanitizer 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 US to get with no experience, as long as your resume answers the chef's real worries: can you stand for eight hours, will you show up on a Saturday night, and will you be safe with food.

1. 1Get a food handler card before you apply. Most states or counties require one, the online course takes a couple of hours and costs very little, and having it already puts you ahead of half the applicants. Check your local health department for which programs they accept.
2. 2Write a two-line objective instead of a summary: the shifts you can work, any paced physical work you have done, and that you are happy to start in the dish pit.
3. 3List any job that proves stamina and reliability: warehouse, cleaning, retail stockroom, farm work, construction labor, 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.

• Food handler card. Most US states or counties require food workers to hold one from an accredited program, and the rules differ by state and sometimes by county. Check your local health department, take an accepted course and put the year on your resume.
• ServSafe Food Handler and ServSafe Allergens. Run by the National Restaurant Association and recognized across the country. The allergens course is short and it makes you noticeably more useful on a busy line.
• ServSafe Food Protection Manager. A step up, usually held by supervisors and chefs. Worth taking if you want to move up to line cook or shift lead.
• In the UK and Ireland, the usual entry qualification is a Level 2 Award in Food Safety in Catering. If you are applying in the US with that, add a plain line explaining it is an accredited food hygiene course, then get the local card as well.
• Employer training also counts: manual handling, chemical safety, 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 US and UK convention even though hospitality resumes 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 posting: prep cook, kitchen assistant, kitchen porter, dishwasher, utility, mise en place, FIFO, food handler, allergen, HACCP, banquet, covers, line, 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.