Line Cook Job Description Resume

Essential Duties And Responsibilities Of A Line Cook

• Helps set up the whole kitchen prior to a restaurants opening.
• Sets up a station by bringing all containers of necessary food items to that point in the line.
• Cooks a specific portion of each plated meal as assigned by either the head or sous chef.
• Assists with cutting, marinating and precooking foods.
• Keeps pace with other cooks on the line so that all food is ready for each plate at the same time.
• Steps in to help another line cook who is running behind.
• Assembles dishes and provides garnishment.
• Plates food in an attractive manner to maximize customer enjoyment.
• Pitches in, along with the rest of the staff, to maintain sanitary conditions and organization in the kitchen.
• Wraps unused items and stores in proper areas at the end of a shift, and shuts off all equipment at the station.
• Cleans and sanitizes the area with soap and warm water.
• Participates in cleaning the rest of the kitchen before the restaurant closes for the night.

What Is A Line Cook

Line cooks cook and plate food under the supervision and direction of an executive chef, sous chef, or head cook. Restaurants typically have multiple line cooks, each working a different station based on that restaurantâs menu.

The reason theyâre called âline cooksâ is because of where they work: the line. Itâs a bit of kitchen slang. A line cook might also be known as a “chef de partie,” or a “station chef.”

The line refers to the area in the kitchen where cooking happens. This is where the fryers, ranges, flat-top grills, and broilers are. And those are all typically set up horizontally, forming a line. Not unlike bar layout design. A cook who works at any one of these cooking stations is, then, called a line cook.

Use Powerful Resume Action Verbs

Use action verbs when listing your experiences on your resume to make your work history more powerful and impactful to restaurant owners.

Strong action verbs on your line cook resume make you stand out as an applicant because they add detail and purpose to each of your job duties and help to further convey your confidence and expertise. For example, our applicant wrote the resume bullet point:

• Reorganized and streamlined stations food process, expediting cooking and food delivery to customers by 23%

They also add to their statement by including hard numbers. By mentioning that they sped up cooking and food delivery by 23%, the applicant gives employers evidence of their strong work ethic.

Heres a list of action verbs for your line cook resume:

Finally, remember to use relevant resume keywords throughout your resume by studying each job posting carefully.

Restaurant owners use applicant tracking systems to filter through applicants, so mention the exact keywords theyre looking for in their job descriptions on your line cook resume to increase your chances of getting an interview.

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Line Cook / Prep Cook / Dishwasherresume Examples & Samples

• Able to take direction and a willingness to learn and grow with the company and property
• Want to be part of a team environment that contributes to the overall growth of the property
• Must have at least one year of progressive kitchen, BOH, experience
• Must be a self starter and willing to learn and grow
• Must be able to show up for scheduled shifts and be able to call if not able to make shift
• Be familiar with kitchen equipment, basic sanitation rules, basic knife skills
• Must be able to take job requirements seriously and be part of a team

Master Line Cook Resume

In the first stage of writing your resume for line cook, you will be drafting the master line cook resume. Which simply means that you will be dumping all your professional information in one source file.

Hence eliminating the need to haphazardly look for information that not only helps in writing your resume in the present timeline but makes updating the resume easier for your future self.

This is how:

• Resume writing in the present: Since you have easy access to all your professional information, it will be extremely easy for you to write your resume. All you need to do now is, identify the information suitable for the job you are targeting and use it to build your cooks resume.
• Resume update in the future: Updating your line cook resume in the future also becomes easier through making a master draft of your resume as you simply need to add any new information to this source file.

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Last Use A Professional Summary Show Your Best Skills

Adding a well-written professional summary at the top of your resume will help draw employers attention to the detail you want to highlight. This section also allows you to summarize your skills and experience in a way that clearly shows you are a good fit for the position. Using the job description and requirements to guide you, customize this section for each position you apply for.

Line Cook Resume Objective

A line cook resume objective should only be written by candidates without any work experience or those with less than 3 years of work experience.

You can take this opportunity to talk about how you are a good candidate for this job by mentioning your internships, volunteering experience, and other such programs that show that you are a valuable candidate.

Understand the line cook resume duties described in the job description and use this to write an optimized objective section.

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How To Align Your Resume With The Job Description

Hiring managers need people with a specific set of skills and experience to fit their needs, and they look at a lot of candidates to find the right person. Job descriptions help them define their key priorities, and including skills and experience in your resume that mirrors these needs can help you stand out from a crowd of applicants.

If youre not sure what to include, start with the requirements that are listed first or mentioned multiple times. These are normally the most important requirements. Look at your resume and make sure it describes how you can fulfill these needs. Hiring managers often look past generic resumes, so avoid copying and pasting, and instead, focus on your major achievements.

What Should I Highlight On A Cook Resume

There are a variety of kitchen staff jobs in the culinary and restaurant industry, such as a line cook, sous chef, kitchen manager and head chef. Though even though their job descriptions may vary greatly, they share common elements to be included on a cook resume such as:

• Resume summary showcases your culinary skills and expertise.
• Culinary experience, achievements and technical or hard skills.
• Culinary-related keywords and action verbs.

Soft skills that contribute to a productive and positive working kitchen environment, such as communication skills and being a team player.

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Essential Skills And Abilities

• The basic and the most vital skill is that he/she should have excellent cooking skills with strong customer service skills.
• They should be skilled at handling various food and kitchen equipment.
• They should be ready to do repetitive tasks, follow the opening and closing procedures, instructions, and should be able to juggle different types of work while working in a high pace work environment.
• They should be calm, committed to quality service, organized with good time management skills, etc.
• They should be a team player who should be physically fit, as he/she needs to stand for long periods.

Line Cook Education And Training Requirements

Most Line Cook positions require no formal education besides a high school diploma. However, Line Cooks can pursue college degrees and certificates in areas such as culinary arts, food preparation, cooking, baking, recipe design, food safety and kitchen administration. A Line Cook learns on the job even if they have prior work experience. This is because each employer follows different procedures, and there is a wide range of safety and regulatory policies.

Their training includes vegetable preparation, butchering of meat and seafood, cooking sauces, making recipes and translating instructions into finished dishes. Candidates can also obtain certifications in safe food handling, specialist skills such as gourmet baking and advanced cooking skills.

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Line Cook Salary: How Much Do Line Cooks Make

According to Indeed, the average line cook pay in the U.S. is $13.51 per hour. Thatâs about $28,100 per year.

Though line cooks with 3â5 years of experience pull in $14.27 per hour or $29,682 per year. And the average line cook pay for line cooks with more than 10 years of experience is $15.45 per hour or $32,136 per year.

Line Cook Resume Samples

A Line Cook is hired by restaurants for preparing all types of food items in the kitchen. Working under the head chef or Sous Chef, these cooks will perform all tasks that are mentioned on the Line Cook Resume setting and stocking stations with needed kitchen supplies preparing food for service, cooking menu items stocking inventory appropriately, ensuring the food that comes out of the kitchen is high in quality complying with nutrition and sanitation regulations and maintaining a positive and professional approach with co-workers.

To get qualified for this post, the job seekers must demonstrate the following skills proven cooking experience, excellent understanding of various cooking methods, equipment, ingredients and procedures accuracy and speed and familiarity with the industrys best practices. A Culinary diploma or training is typically required for this job.

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Common Mistakes For Line Cook Resumes

Writing an effective line cook resume can be challenging, and common mistakes are easily made. First, proofread your resume for typing and grammar issues, as it is imperative that your resume be free from errors. Employers often throw out resumes filled with typos and grammatical errors because the job applicant hasn’t cared enough to perfect the resume, which reflects poorly on the applicant.

Also, avoid listing any personal information on your resume such as your birth date or marital status, as none of this information is relevant to the line cook position and will only come across as being amateurish. With a line cook resume, however, it is acceptable to list your physical capabilities, including that you’re able to stand for the duration of your shift, bear exposure to hot and cold environments, and carry loads of up to 50 pounds.

Which Format Should Is Best To Use For My Line Cook Resume

If you are a level entry cook line with little to no experience, then you can use a functional resume. This format gives prominence to the skills that you have acquired through training and is relevant to the job position.

However, if you have years of experience in the industry, you can use the combination resume format. This format allows you to list both your skills and work history.

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Line Cook Resume: Key Skills

Your resume will be unappetizing if you do not include the key skills section to list down your core line cook resume skills. Your goal here is to make a compelling key skills section that will effectively endorse your skills.

Follow these tricks to write the perfect key skills section:

• Go through the professional experience section with a fine-toothed comb to pick out your core skills. Once you have identified them, replicate them in this section.
• Thats not all, you need to further incorporate keywords in this section. Just go through the job listing, pinpoint the keywords used by the recruiter, then replicate these in your resume. However, only incorporate the keywords you can justify.

Look at this line cook resume example for the perfectly crafted key skills section:

Final Draft Of Line Cook Resume

In the third and final stage of writing your prep cook resume, you need to compose the following two sections:

• The key skills section: We will advise you to draft this section second to last as it will make your job easier. Here, you will pick your skills from the professional experience section.
• The summary or objective section: Whether you write a resume summary or objective depends on the years of your work experience. This section is the last thing to be drafted and will conclude your resume.

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Line Cook Resume: Certifications

A candidate with certifications will always be given preference over someone without one. Gaining the right certification does not take much time and has the potential to do wonders for your job application.

It also shows that you are committed to your profession. Thus, if you have relevant certifications, give them a separate section, ‘Certifications’ and provide the following information in it:

• Name of the certification you have pursued.
• Name of the certificate issuing body.
• Location of the certifying body.
• Enrollment and completion date in the month and year format.

Align this information according to the following format in your prep cook resume:

| | |

Mirror this line cook resume example of the certifications section to leave your recruiters salivating:

Line Cook Duties And Responsibilities

A Line Cook prepares food using recipes and menu items created by the Head Chef and helps keep the kitchen running smoothly. Some of their key duties and responsibilities include:

• Assisting with stocking and setting up the kitchen stations
• Preparing food including cleaning and cutting the ingredients and cooking main dishes, desserts, appetizers and snacks
• Plating prepared foods based on senior chefs guidance
• Working with servers to ensure that orders are completed according to request and on time
• Washing and cleaning the kitchen and cooking utensils and storing the equipment at the end of shifts
• Ensuring that the kitchen operation procedures and hygiene meet food safety standards and regulations

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Prep Cook Vs Line Cook

A prep cook doesnât work on the line, so theyâre not actively cooking, plating, and selling dishes. Prep cooks do all the prep work behind the scenes: chopping vegetables, portioning ingredients, cutting meats, and making sauces. All that prep work is then handed off to the line cooks so it can be prepared into the final product.

Line Cook Resume Header: Tips Red Flags And Best Practices

CHECKLIST For Your Line Cook Resume Header

• Your name and surname in a legible and larger resume font
• The job title youre applying for or your current job title as a subheading to your name
• Link to your portfolio or online profile, such as LinkedIn

Stick to popular email providers such as Gmail or Outlook. And use these professional formats to create your username:

• first.last@gmail.com

• Hybrid resume format

The most optimal format for your particular case will depend on your years of experience, as well as whether youre switching industries or not.

Reverse chronological resumes are best suited for experienced individuals who are sticking to their industry. The experience section takes a central place, and its bullets contain your responsibilities and achievements, coupled with numbers and results.

Functional resumes are used by less experienced jobseekers or career changers. Note that its not a format that recruiters prefer, as most are used to the classic chronological alignment. Instead of a list of job titles, functional resumes focus on your skills, and through what experiences you gained them.

Hybrid resumes are great for both experienced and entry-level candidates, as well as career changers. They combine the best of both worlds – most often in a double column format, where one side of the content is focused on your experience, whereas the other – on your skills, strengths, and proudest moments.

Here are more resume tips regarding your layout and style:

PRO TIP

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Common Key Skills And Action Verbs For Line Cook Resumes

Hiring managers use Applicant Tracking Systems to assess resumes they receive. An ATS scans each resume, looking for key skills and action verbs that match the needs of the company. Resumes with a high number of matches are forwarded to the hiring manager, so if you include more skill keywords in your resume, theres a higher chance youll be invited for an interview.

Demonstrate Your Culinary Experience

The experience section is where you highlight all the accomplishments that you acquired working in your previous job. This section allows you to sell yourself by showcasing the impact you left in each position to ensure the success and profitability of the business.

A resume that includes your culinary experience is more likely to capture the attention of the recruiter as it shows you have what it takes for the job. A good tip is to reword your experience so that it matches the job requirements you are applying for.

Also, to ace your resume, you need to include measurable achievements or results using hard numbers. This is a great way to show what you were able to achieve in your previous work as a line cook.

Try as much as possible to mention the number of guests you catered to, the amount of positive feedback you received, the amount of time and money you saved, the number of cooks you trained, and more.

For instance, you can say:

• Keen learner and detail-oriented

Digital Skills

As a Line Cook, you still need digital skills to use and communicate through digital devices. Some of the essential digital skills include:

• Using technology to communicate
• Handling information

Tipline cook resume job description

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