Just graduated last month and I’m sharpening my resume and interview stories — how would you highlight a 12-week externship on garde manger and a ServSafe Manager cert without sounding generic? I’ve been tailoring the top three bullets to the station I’m applying for and practicing STAR answers, aiming for NYC line cook roles; examples of real questions you’ve gotten and how you framed mise wins or service saves would help a ton.
I always turn the ‘12-week externship’ into one bullet with a name and a number: name the kitchen and chef, cite peak covers (e.g., 140) and one outcome — like redesigning the salad station prep so set-up dropped 15 minutes; if you don’t have exact numbers, give a range. That reads stronger in NYC line cook stacks than generic responsibilities. What kitchen was it so you can name it?
Quick example: I turned ServSafe into an outcome on my resume: ‘standardized allergen mise + FIFO labels; cleared DOH spot check, 0 criticals,’ and framed the externship with one service-impact metric like ‘cut cold-station ticket times 6→3 min on 120-cover Saturdays.’ If you didn’t time tickets, use waste or yield instead — e.g., ‘reduced herb waste about 15% by switching to ice-bath/spin-dry storage’ — do you have one number like that you can stand behind?
Piggybacking on @sevans35, make the garde manger piece service-facing: “12-week GM — held sub-10-min ticket times on Sat rush, set pars for about 130 covers, built an allergen matrix + tightened line checks,” and frame ServSafe as the reason those systems stick. In NYC interviews I keep getting, “what’s your recovery move when the board pops 10 salads at once?” — walk them through how you triage, batch, and communicate with expo. Do you have ticket times or weekly prep volumes from last month you can drop in to keep it non-generic — if not, a reasonable range works.