A maitre d' is judged on the room as a commercial asset: covers turned, VIP and regular handling, how the reservation book is shaped across a service, and the ability to fix a serious complaint at the table before it reaches the owner.
Maitre d' of a 120-seat Michelin-listed dining room, shaping a nightly book of 200 covers across two seatings. Manage VIP and press seating, lead a front-of-house team of fourteen and handle table-side recovery personally.
Here is how to write your own version, and what a manager does with it during a five-minute gap between services.
These roles are filled quietly, through the restaurant network and by ownership approaching people they have already been served by. Interviews are with the general manager or owner and are as much about manner as record — how you speak, how you handle an awkward question, whether you remember names. Expect discussion of specific difficult nights and how you resolved them. Trial services happen, and your existing regulars and industry relationships are an openly valued asset.
The first pass happens fast, often standing up between services. A manager is looking for the shifts you can cover and the volume you are used to, because those are what decide whether you solve this week's problem. A resume that hides either loses to a weaker one that states them plainly.
Use the numbers the industry runs on: covers per service, rooms per shift, average check, transactions per hour, sales per hour, food cost percentage. If you upsold, trained new staff, held a section alone on a busy night or cut waste, those are the lines that get read. Length of service in one venue is itself an achievement here, where turnover is high.
Availability is a hiring criterion in this industry, not an administrative detail, so state it near the top along with any food safety or alcohol service certification you hold. Two lines of summary is plenty: the service style you work in, and the volume you are used to.
Maitre d' to restaurant general manager, or across to a larger or better-known room, or into private members' clubs and hotel restaurant direction. The reputation and the guest book travel with the person more than in any other floor role.
Many of these applications are handed over in person or filled in on a tablet in the venue, so keep the resume to one page and easy to skim in thirty seconds. Where the employer uses an online system, check the file parses cleanly with our free ATS checker.
Availability and any food safety or alcohol service certification near the top, a two-line summary naming your service style and the volume you are used to, experience bullets using covers, rooms, checks or transactions, then training you have given and length of service. One page.
Hiring moves quickly here and is often settled in a short conversation or a trial shift rather than from the page. The resume earns the conversation, so it has to be readable in half a minute, on a phone, by someone in the middle of service.
A food protection certification is required for a person in charge in many jurisdictions, with New York City among those operating its own certificate. Alcohol server training is required or expected in most states. Wine qualifications such as WSET are optional but common at this level, since the maitre d' frequently sells the first bottle of the evening and sets the tone for beverage service.
Your availability and the volume you are used to. Managers hire for the shifts they cannot cover, so a resume that makes availability obvious in the first few lines gets a call ahead of a stronger one that buries it.
Progression runs from the floor to a section or a shift, then to supervision and management, and it happens faster here than in most industries. Length of service in one venue and training new starters are the two things that make the case for you.
One page. Employers in this field read quickly and often on a phone, and a second page rarely gets opened. Cut old short-term roles before you cut certifications or equipment experience.
Use the structure and the way each achievement is phrased, but write your own content. The names and employers here are fictional, and a resume describing work you did not do will not survive an interview.
Start from this layout, edit in a live preview with an ATS score as you type, and download as PDF, Word or image — free.
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