Paul Dodd-Chef director at Rojano's gives career advice for Chefs

Chef Career Advice

Based on his extensive experience working within the Culinary Industry, Chef Director, Paul Dodd offers his advice to aspiring Chefs in an attempt to help them on their journey up the career ladder:

Advice I'd give to a young Chef about to leave college is obviously make the most of college while you are there, learn the basic techniques understand the basis of cooking and look to further in your career, not always going straight to the top to a Michelin star restaurant, maybe working in a smaller good quality restaurant where you can start to learn the basics and knife skills and tasting understanding the part of seasoning.

Slowly set yourself goals and over so many 5 years or so, look to up your game and move to the Chefs at the top of the industry at the time. A young Chef can expect from our industry today quite long working hours, commitment, passion, understanding that it is quite a demanding job, you know the British public we serve, they obviously want the best and with the industry as it is now and so much is on TV, the standards of the cooking are from people, that are a lot more say 10 years ago. So people have come out now and look at the standard and the seasoning and see whether they can see if they can achieve it at home as well.

The best bit of career advice that I have been given is back in 2002, when I was a young 19 years old, I moved to London, I went for a trail with Marcus Wareing and I brought my CV and everything from college and the competitions that I've done, Marcus said to me that's all well and done but the real part of it is whether you get into the kitchen and actually cook When somebody applies for a job at Rojano's.

I read through their CV I look where they have worked previously and look at the first part as and we always see a cover letter and just a bit about themselves and the next part we would then get them in for an interview, not necessarily I'm looking for someone that's got lots of experience and lots of places especially like a place like Rojano's, it's more like that's kind of the restaurant where you kind of move into and start working your way up to a Michelin star restaurant.

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