How to Craft the Perfect Cook Job Description?

Finding the most talented cooks for hire for your restaurant requires attracting the right candidates with a specific job description that outlines the role’s duties and the ideal candidate’s qualifications.

Cook Duties

The role of a Cook goes far beyond just cooking. Here are some responsibilities you should include in the job description for a line cook for your restaurant.

Food safety and hygiene: Cooks need to be able to maintain clean food stations to ensure food safety standards. Cooks also work in tandem with your food safety management system to monitor expiration dates and inventory at their stations.

Food preparation: If your restaurant doesn’t employ prep cooks, your cooks will be responsible for preparing ingredients at their stations. This could include chopping ingredients, making sauces, or portioning ingredients into uniform serving sizes.

Cooking: A Cook’s main duty is to cook the menu items that their station is responsible for. Beyond simply preparing the food by following your restaurant’s recipes, cooks must prepare food in a consistent and timely fashion.

Communication and teamwork: Cooks are expected to communicate effectively with their team, manager, and front-of-house staff. They must be able to coordinate with other cooks to make sure that meals come out warm, consistent, and on time. Cooks are also expected to perform other duties asked of them by management.

Cook Skills and Qualifications

When listed on a job description, the following line cook qualifications and skills should help you attract the best talent in your area.

Experience: Successful job postings for cooks specify how much experience you expect your cooks to have. Start with the phrase, “Previous experience cooking at a restaurant required,” and fine-tune it from there. You could require candidates to have a certain number of years of experience, a degree from culinary school, or experience working in a certain type of restaurant (fine dining, etc.).

Physical abilities: The job of a cook is physically active. Make sure candidates can stand for long periods of time, are able to lift heavy objects like boxes of supplies, and can bend over frequently to grab ingredients.

Soft skills: A cook’s success depends on so much more than their ability to cook. Listing some or all of these soft skills in your job listing will guide you to the right candidate:

Works well under pressure and maintains a professional attitude

Passionate about the mission of your restaurant

Consistent in dish preparation, timeliness, and attitude

Works quickly with few errors

Organized and clean

An effective cook’s job description will help you build a strong pool of qualified candidates and review their applications to find the right fit.