Good Resume Karma for Hospitality Workers_1

1Good Resume Karma for Hospitality Workers So, you've done your turn in the trenches. You've been a busperson, head waiter, bartender, host, and what-not. After ten to twenty years, many hospitality workers, feeling burned-out at the late shifts and long hours, yearn to break into the ranks of higher management. Yet they find themselves in a kind of 'glass ceiling' situation. They can't get a recruiter to look twice at their resume, even when the qualifications are more than a match for the job.The place where hospitality is at a disadvantage is the job titles. The hospitality industry being as pinched for profits as it is, someone hired as a waiter or bartender will find themselves performing management functions: balancing books, being in charge of the staff, purchasing, ordering, overseeing the operation of the establishment, and on and on. All of these skills are transferable to higher-salary jobs, but because they were done under the job title of "hostess" or some such, they mean zip as far as an interviewer is concerned.This is a shame, as the person who knows the business the best is the one who worked their way up through the ranks. The computer age has also sealed the fate of many poorly-considered resumes, as human resource departments search resumes in electronic form, including and excluding keywords and only pulling up those resumes that meet the search criteria.The recruiter's ultimate responsibility is to the restaurants, hotels, casinos, and clubs which they are hired to represent. This is not to say that they don't also have your best interests at heart; it just means that recruiters have to comply with the job description and qualifications set forth by their clients. So they are unable to present candidates that do not match those requirements - no matter how much a candidate calls back.So this should tell you something: there are good and bad keywords and phrases. Words like "restaurant, hotel, hostess, waitress, bartender, cook, chef" tend to get you stuck in a rotating cycle of those positions forever. What they fail to address is that you have done work far outside the scope of your job title, and are ready for a meatier career. A broad majority of hospitality job seekers have job titles unrelated to their current career goals. You are much better off using skill headings rather than job titles, if your goal is to land higher salaries and increase your interview rates. For example, if you were quite practiced in enhanced selling at your business, a handy leading line might be: "A versatile and skilled sales and marketing professional with excellent hands-on experience in developing and improving sales for wholesale and retail operations in the hospitality industry." You did it, why not flaunt it?Or if you were eventually saddled with overseeing the restaurant staff when all you started out as is a line cook, it's high time you boasted: "An assertive manager with outstanding interpersonal people management skills, experienced in communications, negotiations, operations, and scheduling." Again, your title may not have been manager, but that's still the job you did, and the one you're seeking now!Bartenders are another catch-all position. The head office sees a bartender as somebody who washes glasses and pours. But the best of all outcomes is when your bar business expands so that now you're booking entertainers, arranging bachelor parties, expanding to include a kitchen, purchasing and warehousing the stock, hiring and firing help, placing advertisements, and generally overseeing the day-to-day operations. You've been promoted in everything but title!How better to highlight some bullet points:- Recruited and trained X-number servers and kitchen employees in full service dining.- Assisted in the X-number% reduction of labor costs through better selection of staff.- Reduced labor and cost of goods sold by X-number%.- Carried out a demographic study that pin-pointed the establishment's market.- Developed and oversaw the new catering program.- Analyzed and upgraded kitchen equipment to achieve greater efficiency.- Improved cost control by eliminating waste.- Consistently ran low-overhead costs throughout seasonal highs and lows.- Prepared the annual budget for the branch location. - Directed the development of a new line of appetizers.To your ears, this may sound like "laying it on thick", and you may be right, but you have to understand that head-hunters think this way. To them, there is no "we switched to a cheaper brand of vodka in our martinis". There is only "efficiently oversaw a new product strategy that reduced price of goods sold".Chefs are another career category with a few roadblocks in advancement. The publicity of the Celebrity Chefs of the Food Network has helped the chef career gain new stamina in recent years, but maybe that casino manager with the hospitality manager position doesn't watch the Food Network. Many people think 'chef' and are unable to picture anything but a line cook in front of a grill, flipping steaks.If you engaged in anything involving creativity, such as pastry, planning a menu, designing a new side dish, experimenting with a new recipe, or coming up with a new line of beverages, there's room in marketing and design arts for you. After all, if your endeavors were successful, then that shows that you know your target market and what they like. If your restaurant started hosting banquets and providing catering services, then your responsibilities grew with the business.Whatever the situation, it's hard not to find examples where you expanded your job experience to fulfill higher duties. The trick, then, is to focus on your newly gained skills, which, after all, you undertook in the first place hoping for advancement, did you not? By phrasing things in a more general way, it makes it evident that your skills are easy to transfer to a new job category.

Good Resume Karma for Hospitality Workers

1Good Resume Karma for Hospitality Workers So, you've done your turn in the trenches. You've been a busperson, head waiter, bartender, host, and what-not. After ten to twenty years, many hospitality workers, feeling burned-out at the late shifts and long hours, yearn to break into the ranks of higher management. Yet they find themselves in a kind of 'glass ceiling' situation. They can't get a recruiter to look twice at their resume, even when the qualifications are more than a match for the job.The place where hospitality is at a disadvantage is the job titles. The hospitality industry being as pinched for profits as it is, someone hired as a waiter or bartender will find themselves performing management functions: balancing books, being in charge of the staff, purchasing, ordering, overseeing the operation of the establishment, and on and on. All of these skills are transferable to higher-salary jobs, but because they were done under the job title of "hostess" or some such, they mean zip as far as an interviewer is concerned.This is a shame, as the person who knows the business the best is the one who worked their way up through the ranks. The computer age has also sealed the fate of many poorly-considered resumes, as human resource departments search resumes in electronic form, including and excluding keywords and only pulling up those resumes that meet the search criteria.The recruiter's ultimate responsibility is to the restaurants, hotels, casinos, and clubs which they are hired to represent. This is not to say that they don't also have your best interests at heart; it just means that recruiters have to comply with the job description and qualifications set forth by their clients. So they are unable to present candidates that do not match those requirements - no matter how much a candidate calls back.So this should tell you something: there are good and bad keywords and phrases. Words like "restaurant, hotel, hostess, waitress, bartender, cook, chef" tend to get you stuck in a rotating cycle of those positions forever. What they fail to address is that you have done work far outside the scope of your job title, and are ready for a meatier career. A broad majority of hospitality job seekers have job titles unrelated to their current career goals.You are much better off using skill headings rather than job titles, if your goal is to land higher salaries and increase your interview rates. For example, if you were quite practiced in enhanced selling at your business, a handy leading line might be: "A versatile and skilled sales and marketing professional with excellent hands-on experience in developing and improving sales for wholesale and retail operations in the hospitality industry." You did it, why not flaunt it?Or if you were eventually saddled with overseeing the restaurant staff when all you started out as is a line cook, it's high time you boasted: "An assertive manager with outstanding interpersonal people management skills, experienced in communications, negotiations, operations, and scheduling." Again, your title may not have been manager, but that's still the job you did, and the one you're seeking now!Bartenders are another catch-all position. The head office sees a bartender as somebody who washes glasses and pours. But the best of all outcomes is when your bar business expands so that now you're booking entertainers, arranging bachelor parties, expanding to include a kitchen, purchasing and warehousing the stock, hiring and firing help, placing advertisements, and generally overseeing the day-to-day operations. You've been promoted in everything but title!How better to highlight some bullet points:- Recruited and trained X-number servers and kitchen employees in full service dining.- Assisted in the X-number% reduction of labor costs through better selection of staff.- Reduced labor and cost of goods sold by X-number%.- Carried out a demographic study that pin-pointed the establishment's market.- Developed and oversaw the new catering program.- Analyzed and upgraded kitchen equipment to achieve greater efficiency.- Improved cost control by eliminating waste.- Consistently ran low-overhead costs throughout seasonal highs and lows.- Prepared the annual budget for the branch location.- Directed the development of a new line of appetizers.To your ears, this may sound like "laying it on thick", and you may be right, but you have to understand that head-hunters think this way. To them, there is no "we switched to a cheaper brand of vodka in our martinis". There is only "efficiently oversaw a new product strategy that reduced price of goods sold".Chefs are another career category with a few roadblocks in advancement. The publicity of the Celebrity Chefs of the Food Network has helped the chef career gain new stamina in recent years, but maybe that casino manager with the hospitality manager position doesn't watch the Food Network. Many people think 'chef' and are unable to picture anything but a line cook in front of a grill, flipping steaks.If you engaged in anything involving creativity, such as pastry, planning a menu, designing a new side dish, experimenting with a new recipe, or coming up with a new line of beverages, there's room in marketing and design arts for you. After all, if your endeavors were successful, then that shows that you know your target market and what they like. If your restaurant started hosting banquets and providing catering services, then your responsibilities grew with the business.Whatever the situation, it's hard not to find examples where you expanded your job experience to fulfill higher duties. The trick, then, is to focus on your newly gained skills, which, after all, you undertook in the first place hoping for advancement, did you not? By phrasing things in a more general way, it makes it evident that your skills are easy to transfer to a new job category.

Good News The 1 Dream Job How to Guide Works

1Good News The 1 Dream Job How to Guide Works Here is a simple guide to making your dream job a reality in less time than you thought. First of all let's define it. What exactly is your dream job? Sam a recent resume client of mine just gave me the good news he was hired for his own dream come true job. Who would have thought I would be writing resumes and cover letters for cruise ship tour guides? Sam was a waiter in New York City for the last few years who stumbled across my free info articles titled: "Top Secret: How to Land Your Dream Job"; "Learning to Interview Right is Priceless" and my website last year. Here is what worked for him even in a recession.The first thing he did was make an outline. Think of it as a road map to your previously unknown destination. He brain stormed for a while just thinking of all the steps he would need to take to make his dream a reality. He had to do some research using Google and Yahoo now and then. Eventually he even joined a membership only job posting service specifically for cruise line jobs. He then just handled one or two steps at a time. Just focusing on what he could do while keeping his full time job waiting tables. Little by little things just seemed to fall into place. But when he had a few set backs his attention remained focused on his goal. Here is what his road map to success looked like:Goal: Tour Guide for Cruise Shipsโ�ข Skills needed: Be bilingual, Friendly, Be a great public speaker, become knowledgeable about the popular Caribbean destinations. (watch the travel channel & record Caribbean shows)โ�ข Real world experience: Tour Guide for Grey line tours in NYC & Casino Black Jack Dealer.โ�ข Need: get in good shape & get short term lease on apartmentโ�ข Research: Network, make an inside connection, research requirements.โ�ข Learn CPR & First aid this gives him an advantage over other applicantsโ�ข Plan: He could start as a waiter if need be, then move up to tour guide when spot available. Hopefully there will be no need to sacrifice.โ�ข Reconnect with work colleagues and employers asking for reference letter signatures and contact info.โ�ข Get a professional resume targeting a cruise line tour guide position as competition is stiffโ�ข Get a few great cover letters, thank you letters and reference letters written at the same timeโ�ข Scour the employment ads for cruise line openingsโ�ข Spread the word. He mentioned to his friends and associates exactly what he was planning. His own Chef had a connection for him that would help. He had formally worked for a major cruise line for a few years when he was single. Chef said: "Aim for work in the casino."โ�ข Visualize: He made a dream photo slide show in his PC so he could visualize his goals dailyโ�ข Be flexible and adaptable in order to get what you want. He improved upon his first career choice of being a Tour guide. After going to some effort researching the steps to his dream job he found out he had another built in advantage. He had previously been an Atlantic City Black Jack and Roulette dealer and many cruise ships have casinos on board. The only reason he quit after 5 years of fun every night was the cigarette smoke. His new employers assured him that would not be a concern with them. They are in the middle of the Ocean and merely need to exhaust the smoky air with fans. Another bonus: most cruise ship workers don't pay for room and board so the wages they earn do not have to go to rent or groceries. They also do not need to make an expensive car payment every month as they are living on board the ship. There is also a deluxe fitness center for all to use as well so the normal gym membership fees do not apply either. In exchange there are a few pitfalls the bars and casinos. He ended up with the most glamorous job working as a dealer in the casino. The Major advantage here was he absolutely loved travel of course, but he didn't want to be limited to working on the ship while the guests were off on excursions and tours at exotic locales. So he joined a cruise line where the casino closes when the ship is in port. This way he is free to live it up like a king.Mind you there is serious competition for these wonderful careers aboard cruise ships. Even with experience it took Sam 3 full months to get hired. Fortunately he had a little help from a friend as well as professionally written resumes and cover letters. He feels he made it through the vast competition due to being bilingual, knowing CPR/First Aid and his casino experience was exactly what they were looking for. In the end persistence will pay off so start with your own road map today.

Free Resume Tips - For The Food Industry Professional

1Free Resume Tips - For The Food Industry Professional Ask anyone involved in the food industry and they will tell you that running a restaurant takes hard work. The challenges of institutional food management are also enormous, yet both of these career paths offer great rewards to those who enjoy working in a fast-paced, sensory environment. To land your next great position as an Executive Chef, General Manager, or Assistant Manager, it's essential that your restaurant and food-service resume include the right elements: evidence of your past accomplishments, proof of your leadership ability, and a flair for creative problem solving. Passion of food goes a long way as well. But where can you find free resume tips to handle this daunting task?You may only need to consider what the essential qualities for the job are for you to create a great resume, and it's here that free resume tips come in handy.The Food-service professionals' days are filled with a dizzying array of tasks, from coordinating the kitchen and dining room to placing food orders and designing a successful menu. Well-designed restaurant and food-service resumes establish one's past success in a no-nonsense manner, providing the proof a hiring manager or restaurant owner is looking for when scheduling interviews. So this one important free resume tip that comes straight from the responsibilities that the job entails.Finding good nice free resume tips for your food-service resume will give you a competitive edge over what will be submitted by other well-qualified professionals. Whether you already have a draft that requires editing or need a newly created resume, you will need to work one-on-one with an editor experienced in crafting compelling, successful restaurant and food-service resumes. He/she should also give you helpful free resume tips and free resume samples.Land the professional restaurant and food-service position you're seeking with an expertly-crafted restaurant and food-service resume.Hiring managers want to know what you have already done for your prior employers. This is another essential free resume tip you can include in your resume, try to have figures and facts that you can quote and discuss. Are you an expert in some exotic cuisine? Were you the most creative in your position? Find things that you can give to the HR person in black and white and you'll find that you get better responses and is a plus to your resume.Talk about the positive things that you have done for your employers, and if there were negative situations, find the positive light in them in case you are asked.The dreaded cover letterDo you need a cover letter? Of course it's a plus in free resume tip to remember. In many cases, hiring managers like to see something that shows your individual personality. After so many resumes, they can begin to look the same. This isn't to say that you should start off with a joke or send a picture of yourself, but you should use a cover letter to give a little indication of the type of employee you are.You want to show that you know what kinds of responsibilities can be expected of you if hired and that you understand the goals of the company.Show them that you want this job and that you are more than ready for it.Editing mattersSimple errors in grammar and spelling go a long way to hurting your chances of getting hired in any higher position. Take the time to have a friend or family member read your resume and also provide some free resume resumes he may see lacking in your resume to make sure that you sound and look professional.Remember that hiring managers only have a little time to read all of the resumes that they receive. Get right to the point, and your resume will get right to the top of the pile.

Free Dream Job Tryouts With a Cover Letter

1Free Dream Job Tryouts With a Cover Letter Imagine on your next vacation you get to try out any dream job anywhere that you want. Charter fishing boat Captain, Surfing Instructor in Hawaii or Underwater Marine Photographer imagine the possibilities. Think about what a great idea this would be to give it a tryout before you leave your current secure employer. After all how will you really know the real truth about your dream job until you give it a go yourself? For a while when I was younger I had the itch to be a Chef in a fine dining restaurant. That was before I took on a job at a restaurant called Bell's Farm Steak House a local RI favorite while I was going to college at Bryant.As I worked my first month as a waiter I had a lot of contact with the kitchen. I could see the tremendous pressure the Chef was under to pump out the food. Dishes had to be perfect, hot and look great all at the same time. In addition all the diners would generally come in all at once, so the kitchen would get buried with orders shortly after. If that pressure wasn't enough, the banquet side of the house used the same kitchen and Chef. While working there I learned the real truth about the late night hours, extreme stress and the hot humid working environment you can't escape from. That one was crossed off my list fast.So how could you try out any dream job your heart desires? Simple really use a targeted resume with a professional introduction letter (cover letter) offering your services for free in exchange for a mentoring opportunity from your target. In case that first attempt does not work you can offer to exchange any other valuable services or products that might work. If you are an Artist, you might be able to exchange one of your oil paintings you would normally sell anyway. As a final resort you could always offer money too. You could try doing a little background research on your target and find a passion which might induce cooperation. If your would be mentor is a big golfing fan you could send him a weeks free membership certificate to a great golf course.Even at my former employer Bell's Farm Steak house in Smithfield, RI it was fairly routine for our Chef Dave to host future Chef candidates from Johnson & Wales University, a local culinary college.They simply exchanged their free labor for a two week mentoring opportunity from a superb Chef. It helped keep down labor costs, and the better performers in the program where actually hired on. Wouldn't it be the same with virtually any other profession? My advice is to take one small step towards living your dream right now and write up a great cover letter. Make an outline first with the ultimate goal in mind. If words are not your forte' you can always hire a writer. Remember researching your target helps increase your success rate.By the way, I happen to know this works well since this is exactly how I started my mortgage career way back when. Good Luck!