Corporate Kitchen Jobs
corporate kitchen jobs
So if you want to change jobs what choices do people have when it comes to transferring their skills within the hospitality marketplace? For example, for this exercise, let’s take someone working as a Pastry Chef de Partie in a hotel, wishing to move to a different area to gain experience and build on their career to date.
So what are the options?
Hospitality is a huge area if you think about it, everywhere from London Zoo to Buckingham Palace, care homes to restaurants & hotels have a kitchen preparing food to people but not all kitchens are the same obviously and for our candidate looking for a pastry chef role, not all kitchens will produce fresh pastry or patisserie. So this is why it is so important when applying for a vacancy within the hospitality industry that you do your homework and research the areas that will be right for you/our next career step on the ladder.
Also it should give you a good chance of enjoying your job so you’ll be in a good position to stay in the position for a decent length of time as changing too often can go against you as potential new employers may think you are just a ‘Job Hopper’!
So how do you go about researching your specialist area in hospitality?
Jobs can still be found in the local newspaper, obviously, but there is so much more available on the web by using internet job sites such as hospitality-people.co.uk and the internet is an amazing tool making research material so much easier and faster to access.
So for our pastry chef de Partie, where could a person with such skills move to from a hotel environment?
There are various options such as Cruise Ships with the larger ones having large teams of chefs and they usually produce food to a very high standard, and this will also give our chef the chance to travel experiencing different cultures & countries.
Some larger or fine dining A La Carte restaurants will have one or two pastry chefs responsible for producing fresh desserts and pastry products. Other areas may include catering companies, who can employ thousands of staff working in different areas, such as private & corporate events through to directors dining events for banks/financial institutions.
Good pastry chefs are always very much needed in all these areas due to a very high demand for freshly produced products. Working for a catering company that does contracts for large events may also give our chef opportunities to work in areas that might otherwise not have been possible, given the contacts that a catering company has with many high profile and influential organisations with excellent reputations. This can be a great plus when it comes to producing a CV to apply for jobs in the future. Some other areas a pastry chef could use their skills could be Conference & Banqueting companies, quality Member Clubs and also larger Gastro Pubs and bars.
A final word on career progression - when an employer looks at a CV/resume for a certain job position almost all of them like to see a certain amount of stability in a candidates work history, and as previously mentioned, moving on from a job too quickly or having lots of jobs within a short period of time isn’t really going to be looked upon favourably. So this is why researching your next job move is vitally important and why there should be a degree of fluidity and to some extent, common ground between the jobs on your CV.
Have you ever faked it ’till you made it, in your career? Was it easy? Was it worth it?
I just started my first job after university in a corporate/office setting. To be honest, it really sucks and Im forced to do menial things like keep kitchen supply in stock in the kitchen (coffee, milk,etc), put dishes in the dishwasher and be a receptionist sometimes.
So my manager had a meeting with me to tell me that I was reluctant when she assigns me menial tasks. When she does I say “OK”. She says I should be saying, ‘Great no dramas!!!” with a smile on my face. I was sitting there thinking ‘So you want me to cheer and do a whoop-dee-doo dance everytime u want me to clean up after the ppl in the office?’.
From now on, during my lunch hour I would have to be emptying the dishwasher and putting them back to the cupboard. Plus making sure the kitchen is clean thorughout the WHOLE day.
I cant just put up a smile everyday for work pretending everything is A-OK and fake it till i make it. Once i do that, id feel like something inside me has died.
What should i do?
First of all you have to find yourself another job, preferably with a man as your boss. Then you have to go to your present boss and tell her that you have been approached by a big reputed company offering you a very lucrative package and ask her what should you do ? This is just to make your present boss feel stupid.
Then tell her that you hope she would be able to find a replacement soon. All this you have to say in a very subtle manner.
People can only humiliate us if we let them.
Passion Expert Gary Zelesky – Passion In The Kitchen!
