How To Write A CV In NigeriaA culinary career is a lifelong dream for millions of people who love cooking. However, having a cooking talent is not enough to make a career in the culinary world. Find out how to become a professional chef in Nigeria right now!
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1. Fully understand the career
Wondering how to become a world class chef? First, make sure you completely understand what this job is all about! A culinary career is much more challenging and demanding than home cooking. Chefs often have irregular working hours and schedules and sometimes work for 14 hours per day.
Moreover, working as a professional chef means you don’t often get to cook the meals you personally like. You will rely on your restaurant’s menu for the choice of dishes and ingredients, not your personal taste. Moreover, being a pro chef means always learning new cuisines, recipes, and techniques, so that your skills don’t become stale.
Finally, you also need to understand that a career in cooking has many stages and it can take you many years to finally become the head chef. There is a good chance that even with a huge culinary talent and proper education, you will start working in the kitchen with the most mundane jobs like peeling the potatoes and cleaning the fish before you can move on to more satisfying duties and, subsequently, higher pay.
Read more: 8 Reasons To Learn Cooking
2. Have the passion
Cooking is a career that can get very boring very fast if you are not passionate about it. Most successful chefs today admit that they first became interested in cooking back when they were little and spent time with their mothers working them cook for the family.
If you were interested in cooking from a young age, continue to cook every day without losing interest, and always strive to be a better cook, a culinary career may be exactly what you need. However, it’s also not uncommon for people to become interested in cooking as adults after watching a cooking TV competition, and they make pretty good chefs as well.
3. Get training
Chefs often consider a formal training to not be a compulsory part of becoming a professional cook, but the truth is that proper training can give you the skills and discipline required to work in a real restaurant kitchen. Luckily, there are plenty of culinary schools in Nigeria to choose from.
Currently, the best culinary school in Nigeria is probably the Cooking Academy. This school has both all-inclusive programs for aspiring chefs (you can apply for the 2019-2020 course here) and short-term programs for various aspects of the culinary world, including foreign cuisines and mixology.
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4. Maintain the hygiene
Kitchen is a place where hygiene is vitally important, and you need to realize it long before you first step into a professional kitchen. Maintaining the kitchen hygiene means both keeping yourself clean, regularly washing your hands and undergoing regular medical tests, and tidying up the kitchen during the cooking process and afterwards, timely disposing of leftovers, and preventing food from getting spoiled.
5. Apply for a job/internship
Now that you know how to become a chef at home, you are ready to move on to a professional kitchen. You have two basic options: to apply for an unpaid internship or to apply for a full-time paid job.
An internship will not bring you any money, so make sure you have an alternative source of income or that someone can support you financially while you’re doing it. However, an unpaid internship for a reputable restaurant or hotel can give you valuable skills and connections in the industry.
Getting a paid job as an inexperienced chef is tougher than landing an internship, but completely doable. Make sure to write a good resume and a convincing cover letter. During the interview, your cooking skills will likely get tested, so make sure you have something impressive up your sleeve!
Read more: How To Write A CV In Nigeria
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