It has been the foundation of my business ever since I’ve entered recruitment, about not dealing with commis chefs. There are several reasons for this, but mainly it boils down to an ethical decision, and we’ve stuck by it.

Now we’re expanding that philosophy even further. We won’t recruit for any position Chef de Partie or junior to that.

The reason?

We recently tried to help a young Chef de Partie get into a position where she could start to challenge herself. We came across her post on LinkedIn & knew we could help her. We spoke to her at length, listened to her needs and aspirations, and we discussed a few options.

She sent her CV to us, and on the surface of it, it looked like a good starting point. Two jobs, each being two plus years in each one. And this is where it started to fall apart. References were tricky to pin down and the candidate, all of a sudden doesn’t reply to any communications.

Now as Chef de Parties are as scarce as rocking horse poop, I decided to go back to LinkedIn and view the post we’d answered. There were recruiters all over it like a rash & I dare say the candidate has been promised the earth.

But here is the thing, how many of those recruiters will see a dead cert in a placement or, actually want to develop the candidate and help them make the right choice. The answer is, reading the 24 comments on the thread on LinkedIn, that very few actually took the time to listen to the candidate.

So, to be honest we’d rather spend our time wisely. We work with candidates to help them develop into better chefs, not those that will leap at the chance of earning another couple of grand.