How Do I Get a Professional Cooking/Baking Job in a Restaurant?
The following is brought to you from the Eggbeater blog. By Shuna Fish Lydon:
How Do I Get a Professional Cooking/Baking Job in a Restaurant?
As you know, I get a lot of questions from cooks or future cooks
from all over the world. When I started eggbeater I didn’t really
understand the internet, and I didn’t know people from everywhere would
be reading it, or even that they would get to it from someplace other
than the exact location I was writing it from. You could say I was
naive. You’d be correct, and diplomatic.
People
want to know how they can become a chef, pastry chef, or even start
cooking professionally. People want to know what to do when the
kitchens they work in suck. Female cooks want to know exactly how much
harassment they should take. Everyone wants me to tell them which is
the best culinary school. A lot of people want to know what the pay
scale is. Many people ask Google how many hours they should expect to work as a chef/cook.
But the question I get most is how to land the very first job, stagiere, apprenticeship.
How do I get my first cooking job?
What will the interview be like?
How long does it take to become a pastry chef?
Can I work for you?
I
write, and have written, the same email response over and over and
over. You’d think by now I’d have a form-letter, but I’m still a little
naive, so I don’t.
And because I have recently started pounding the pavement again, I can say that my own advice, after 17 years, still works.
Here
are my standard tips for getting into your first kitchen, and maybe
some more, if you so choose to make kitchens your life, love and home.
Read the rest of the 18 points and more tips about laning your Chef/Baking Job!
Click here
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Everything you Need to Know to Succeed in Job Interviews
When heading into a job interview you should really plan ahead. It’s not like stumbling into a volume of Kitchen Confidential and the hidden underworld of cooking.
You need to be fresh and alert, sharp as a knife, eh?
The interview process well, tt’s a lot like moving into a dinner service, you prep and gather the team around to clarify any questions about the menu, specials, recipes, possible 86′ed items..you get the picture.
Next time you head into a job interview treat it like your going in to a night that has been booked for weeks and there is going to be some notable names at the tables.
I wish I personally could give the best advice out there, but I each job is different and each professional has a different set of skills.
I do however think that you should check a few websites that go over the basics, then find some tips and even some tricks to help make that first meeting go a lot smoother.
Here is one link/website that has a whole lotta info for you.
Best to all of you out there searching.
Never give up and know that there is a kitchen out there (somewhere) that fits you perfectly.
Twitter Tool for job searches
Just wanted to let those who are following know that if you are a twitter user here is a great place to look for jobs.
TwitterJobSearch.com - twitter job search engine.
http://www.twitterjobsearch.com/search?q=cooks
Wishing well to all of you talented cooks who are on the hunt to find that place that can use your skills.
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Get Jobs Via RSS
I know you love coming to Linecooks.com to search through the jobs, but I wanted to let you know that you can also get the 20 most recent job listings through your rss reader. When you see the 
icon just click on it and choose your reader. Google has been my personal favorite, although you can choose just about any rss reader you like.
Remember: even though you may have check the RSS it does only list the most recent 20 job listing for cooks. (I hope to expand that to at least 50)
You will see the icon on every page of Line Cooks for you convience.
Comments and questions welcomed.
Happy Fourth Of July 2008
I would like to wish all the Job Hunters and Employers a Very Happy Independence Day!
From my experience in the past 4th of July was often a very slow day for most restaurants. Everybody is out grilling, off to the beach or relatives house.
It is a great day to just sit on the porch, enjoying the wonder freedoms we have here in the United States Of America.
Hope you cooks don’t party so hard you don;t show up for work tomorrow. I know how it goes, but I always showed up. Sometimes not in the best of shape, but on those days a warm body to loosely hold a station together was often enough.
Best wishes to you and your families,
-Brian
HOUND removal from Beta Syndicate
Quick Update:
Just wanted to let everyone know that Hound has had some recent changes in their business model and unfortunately we have to remove them from our feeds.
We are always out scouting to new places to get your jobs listed and will add those sites when we come across them. If you are one of those Job Listing places, let us know so we can get our feed to your visitors.
Graphics with “Hound” will be updated shortly.
Getting the word out
Things have been steadily picking up since launch on May 3rd. Of course it is not picking up fast enough for me. This site is still running on a shoestring budget and I’m looking for cooks, chefs, managers etc… around the country who are interested in writing for the LineCooks.com Blog - Willing to flyer around cities - write articles about the various positions in the kitchen including job duties, tips, recipes, interviewing, knife handling and even kitchen stories that you would like to share.
If this sounds like something your into, send me an email with what you would like to contribute.
Compensation could come in the form of link backs, banner advertisements on this site, and cash for very well written articles.
Just trying to get the best cooks hooked up with the best jobs in the USA.
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Getting the Job Board set up
This is sort of backtracking. I have the site up and running. Cool. I had plans for doing blog posts as I was building, designing, and installing stuff for the site. Guess that idea is scrapped.
The good news is that the site is up and it works. I had a small problem getting paypal to take payments when buying job posting credits. That was the only (real) bump in the road. 
The code and design was fun to “plug-into” the job board software. I really have some intimate knowledge of how this thing is pieced together and feel I can do most anything with the board. Building out XML files so other sites are getting the full job feed from Linecooks.com is still a work in progress. I got the basic feeds that are advertised on the homepage and header of the site working. If your a XML page builder and can offer some assistance drop me a line.
OK, now back to working on getting this blog looking like part of the site.
I know this posting doesn’t have anything to do with finding a cooking job online, BUT it does make me feel better knowing that I have got the ball rolling, or the words on the page, as the case may be. It also does help having a place to post cooking, chef, and restaurant manager jobs that you have.
