5 Restaurant Resume Examples That Worked In 2021

Why this resume works

• Quantifiable metrics, or numerical summaries of your work experience, do a lot more for you than words can. Did you know that 70% of hiring managers won’t even look at a resume if it doesn’t include specific numbers?
  • It can be difficult to think of valuable numbers to include. As a restaurant worker, you should include numbers on when you hit or exceeded sales targets, where you boosted efficiency, customer reviews you received, employer reviews, the number of menu items you had command over, how and how much you increased revenue, health inspection ratings, reductions in staff turnover, the number of guests you cared for or the number of guests seated per night, reliability, etc.
• This resume example includes a resume objective. We recommend you include an objective when you’re changing careers, or when you need to fill empty space on your resume.
  • Resume objectives are a helpful place to highlight your specific skillset and demonstrate your understanding of the job you’re applying to.
    • This means, you must be specific. Avoid vague statements in your objective, and make sure you create a unique objective for each job you apply to. For example, this restaurant resume details years of experience, front of house experience, communication, costumer service, and levelheadedness.
    • This resume also includes the restaurant title, which we highly recommend you do too.

Why this resume works

• This resume does a great job of keeping things short and to the point. Your bullet points should all be under 200 characters. If you have a lot of information to include, make sure you’re quantifying your experience and consider breaking it up into two bullet points.
• Did you know that 250+ applicants may apply to a single job posting?
  • Being a hiring manager and reviewing this many restaurant server resumes is, undoubtedly, stressful. That is why hiring managers only spend 6 seconds reviewing each resume. If you want to grab their attention, you’ll need to make sure you quantify most of your bullet points.
    • Numbers naturally draw the eye, making hiring managers spend more time on your resume. And they demonstrate your achievements more than words ever could.

Why this resume works

• It’s okay if you don’t have years of experience working in the restaurant industry, but it can feel intimidating to apply for a job without much experience.
  • Focus on demonstrating your job skills, rather than titles, as an entry level worker. You can even include school projects, internships, or volunteer positions.
  • This is a good time to include a resume objective.
• Whether or not you’re an entry level restaurant worker, you need to carefully write your resume skills. Unfortunately, many applicants fail to realize the importance of this section, and have an exceedingly difficult and disheartening job search.
  • If you don’t include a skills section, your entry level restaurant resume may pass through automated scanners and into the trash before a hiring manager ever sees it.
  • Fortunately, skills sections are really easy to include. We recommend including 4-10 skills specific to restaurant work. You can even specialize your skills section for each job you apply to be carefully reading job descriptions and picking up on the skills they value.
    • Important restaurant worker skills include customer service, communication, time management, organization, sales, flexibility, and more.

Why this resume works

• When you have years of experience, it’s important to demonstrate growth and increased responsibility over time. For example, this restaurant manager resume demonstrates vast management experience in both restaurant management experiences.
• Start with strong action words.
  • It’s important to avoid words that take away from your ability to work independently or actively. For example, starting a bullet point with the word “helped” is much less impactful than the word “spearheaded”.
    • Other great action words in this resume include: calculated, collaborated, negotiated, achieved, coordinated, crafted, supervised, built, cultivated, and outperformed.
  • If you’re having trouble structuring the perfect sentences, that’s okay. It’s not easy! That’s why we built this resume checker.

Why this resume works

Fast Food Restaurant resume example

• You should aim to have 2-4 work experiences, and 3-6 bullet points for each work experience on your fast food restaurant resume. With so little space, make sure you include metrics and active voice while avoiding unnecessary filler words.
• When you’re structuring your resume, make sure you write your work experiences in reverse chronological structure. That means you need to state your most recent experience at the top of your resume and work backwards.
  • This will help demonstrate your growth throughout you career.
  • Additionally, only 20% of hiring managers say they read every single work experience. By keeping your most relevant experience towards the top, you’ll make sure hiring managers see the most important information.
  • Finally, automated systems (ATS) used by hiring managers are formatted to look through resumes written in the standard (reverse chronological) order.