Chef CV (UK): format, example and what kitchens check

Chef adverts have come back fast. CV-Library data reported by the Craft Guild of Chefs on 13 July 2026 counted 40,395 chef postings in the second quarter of 2026, up 83.4 percent on the 23,103 posted in the same quarter of 2025. That happened while the wider market was going the other way: the Office for National Statistics, in its release of 18 June 2026, put total UK vacancies at 707,000 for March to May 2026, a fall of 19,000 on the quarter, with accommodation and food service activities down 4,000.

So there is work. What there is not is time. A head chef reads CVs on a phone in the twenty minutes between service and the delivery, and the question they are answering is narrow: can this person hold a section in my kitchen on a Saturday night. A CV that opens with "hard working team player with a passion for food" does not answer it. A CV that opens with covers, cuisine and section does.

What a head chef looks for in the first twenty seconds

Four things, in this order.

Which section you have run, and at what level: commis, chef de partie, junior sous, sous, head. Which cuisine and style: gastropub, high volume branded casual dining, hotel banqueting, fine dining with a tasting menu, contract catering, care home. How many covers, per service and at peak. Kitchen size and structure: how many chefs on the rota, how many on the pass at once, who you reported to.

If those four are not visible without scrolling, your CV goes on the maybe pile, and the maybe pile is where CVs go to die.

The format UK kitchens expect

Two pages, reverse chronological, most recent job first. No photo. The National Careers Service is blunt about the rest: a CV needs contact details, an introduction, education history, work history and references, and you should not include your age, your date of birth, whether you are married, or your nationality. That advice holds across UK hiring and there is nothing chef specific that overrides it.

The order that works for kitchen jobs:

1. Name, mobile, email, town. Nothing else at the top.
2. A four line profile with your section, cuisine, covers and what you want next.
3. Kitchen skills and tickets in a short block, so it survives a phone screen.
4. Work history with dates as month and year, because gaps in kitchen CVs are normal and unexplained ones are not.
5. Training and qualifications, including apprenticeship level and food safety certificate.
6. One line saying references are available, with your last head chef's name held back until they ask.

A profile you can copy

This is the part most chefs get wrong, so here is a filled in version. Swap the specifics for your own.

Chef de partie with five years in high volume kitchens, currently running larder and sauce on a 120 cover à la carte service at a Leeds city centre gastropub. Trained through a Level 2 commis chef apprenticeship, Level 2 food safety in catering, allergen trained and confident writing the allergen matrix for a changing menu. Looking for a junior sous role with a stable rota and a kitchen that develops its own people.

Four sentences, and a head chef already knows your level, your volume, your paperwork and why you are applying. Compare that with "passionate chef seeking a challenging role in a dynamic kitchen", which describes nobody.

Turn duties into evidence

Every chef CV says "responsible for preparing food to a high standard". None of them say anything. The fix is to add the number, the section and the service pattern. The figures in the rewrites below are invented for the example, so replace them with your own kitchen's real ones.

Before: Responsible for the starter section.

After: Ran the starter section solo across six services a week, 90 to 140 covers on Friday and Saturday, with all mise en place set for a 6pm open.

Before: Helped with ordering and stock.

After: Placed daily orders with three suppliers on a £4,200 weekly food budget and cut weekly waste by reworking the prep list around a two day fresh fish delivery.

Before: Trained junior members of staff.

After: Brought two commis chefs from prep to running the veg section unsupervised in four months, including their food safety induction and allergen sign off.

Before: Worked in a busy kitchen with high standards.

After: Held the kitchen through a five week refurbishment on a reduced menu of 18 dishes, keeping the site at a 5 food hygiene rating at the following inspection.

You do not need every number audited. You need numbers you could defend in a trial shift conversation, because you will be asked about them.

The tickets and paperwork kitchens actually check

This is where a chef CV either reassures a manager or creates work for them.

Food safety training. UK law does not require you to hold a certificate. Food business operators must ensure that food handlers are supervised, instructed or trained in food hygiene matters commensurate with their work activity, which comes from Regulation (EC) 852/2004, Annex II, Chapter XII. In practice the industry guides recommend at least Level 2 for anyone preparing high risk open food, and Level 3 for chefs with supervisory responsibility, so put the level, the awarding body and the year on the CV. The National Careers Service notes that these courses run one to two days, so if yours has lapsed, fix it before you apply rather than explaining it away.

Allergens. Food law names 14 allergens, and the Food Standards Agency requires allergen information for every dish containing them. Since October 2021, food prepacked for direct sale, the sandwiches and salads made and wrapped on site before someone orders them, has needed a full ingredients list with allergens emphasised. In March 2025 the FSA published best practice guidance urging the out of home sector to provide written allergen information covering all 14, on the menu, in a folder on the counter or as a matrix on the wall, backed by a conversation. A chef who can write and maintain that matrix is worth saying so on the CV.

HACCP and daily records. If you have owned the food safety management system, name it. The FSA's Safer Food, Better Business catering pack is what most independents run, and "maintained SFBB diary, temperature records and cleaning schedules for a 14 chef kitchen" tells a general manager exactly what they are getting.

The hygiene rating. The Food Hygiene Rating Scheme is run by the FSA with local authorities in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and rates a business from 0 to 5 after an inspection. If a site you ran held or improved its rating, that is one of the few genuinely verifiable claims a chef can make on paper.

Right to work. If you need to prove your status, generate a share code at gov.uk before you apply. It is nine characters, starts with a W and is valid for 90 days, so one code covers several applications. Do not put the code itself on your CV. A line saying you can provide a share code on request removes the question from the manager's head.

If you have no kitchen job yet

The route in is still the apprenticeship or the porter's door. The National Careers Service lists a Level 2 foundation in catering and hospitality, Level 2 intermediate apprenticeships as commis chef or production chef, Level 3 advanced as chef de partie or pastry chef, and a Level 4 higher apprenticeship as senior culinary chef, typically one to two years each. It also puts chef pay at around £22,000 for a starter and £40,000 for experienced chefs, on 40 to 45 hours a week including evenings, weekends and bank holidays. Know those figures before someone quotes you a salary at the end of a trial.

With no experience, your CV leads on the food safety certificate, any college professional cookery course, and anything that proves you can stand up for ten hours: warehouse shifts, kitchen portering, a Saturday job at a bakery. Write those as real work, with the volume attached.

Where kitchen jobs are actually filled

Caterer.com and Indeed carry most of the branded and hotel roles, and Find a job on GOV.UK carries a lot of contract catering and care sector kitchens that never appear on the big boards. Groups such as Mitchells and Butlers or Greene King recruit through their own careers sites and will not answer a CV sent anywhere else. Independents are different: many still fill sections through a chef they already know, an Instagram post, or someone who walked in at three in the afternoon with a printed CV when the kitchen was quiet. That last one still works, and it works better if the CV in your hand already reads like the one described above.

Before you send it

Check the section and covers are on the first three lines. Check every job has month and year dates. Check the food safety level and year appear once, clearly. Check you have named the cuisine, not just "restaurant". Check the file is a PDF named with your own name, because a head chef with 60 downloads in a folder will not open cv-final-2.pdf.

Then expect a trial shift. The CV gets you the trial. The trial gets you the job, and nothing you write changes what happens on the section at half past seven on a Friday.