What you are selling:
 

Qualified purveyors know that the first requirement for a good sale is thorough product knowledge. This is easy when the product is seafood but a challenging when the product is you, yourself.  While you probably feel that this is a highly personal endeavor, job search is in truth a commodities trade, and the commodity is you. Ideally the seafood guy wants to make sure he is selling the right product for the restaurant, because he doesn't want to have to drive back and replace it. If you sell the commodity of you to the wrong guy, you will not have to replace you, but you will be on the street after a failed position. You need to consider precisely what you are bringing to the chef market because:
 
Knowing what you offer means three things:
1)      It means knowing what to explain to a potential employer.
2)      It means knowing what you want or need to add to your profile.
3)      It means that developing the insight of where you will succeed and which career path provide the best financial and emotional compensation in your future.

Perhaps you can do everything, but if you are wrong, it will cost you. At the worst it can impact your entire career. You need to know what you have to offer, what an employer is buying and why. Are they, for instance,  hiring you below scale is he looking at your great talent or is he interested in your considerable naivety which will provide him with a budget chef until you burn out?
 
Snakes and snails and puppy dog tails..what are you made of?
 
Not necessarily in any particular order, here is what you are putting on the block when you go for an interview. Each of these components of  your total career offering is important to one employer or another. They are not only your selling points but what you have to sell.
 
Talent: The hot ticket in food. A born genius palate, an instinctive approach to food, a creative spirit and a mind possibly unfettered by convention. You can’t acquire talent. You were or were not born with it. While the really great chefs all possess indisputable talent, so do the great failures. Since little work goes into getting it, people tend to take way to much credit for having it. Talented chefs without other assets are called “cooks” or, in some cases, bozos. Talent is a blessing, but it never stands alone.
 
Skill: Technique, timing, heat, rhythm, knife skills, that sixth sense, the ear for sizzle, ability to make things happen without setbacks. Skill is learned with effort and intent. Good skills replace a great deal of talent. Talent and skill, of course, are a great combination, although many talented chefs feel that they are just too good to take the time to stop and learn. Skill is the gold standard of good food.
 
Knowledge: Skill’s older sibling. How to deal with a crush, what makes lemons go funny, which seafood is best when and why, how many apples do you need for the banquet, how to speak with an angry dishwasher, when oil needs changing, how thick the steak needs to be, where to get product, what to serve with Etruscan wine. Thai cuisine, Latvian specialties, the truth about sustainability, how to run a spread sheet. The knowledge required in a professional kitchen in infinite and composed of trivia, Ephemera, hard wired content gained through  listening, asking, reading. You can get by at some level with talent and skill, but to join the big leagues you need knowledge, and you need to know what you don't have in order to acquire it. Knowledge without skill makes you a restaurant critic.
 
Experience/Provenance: Part of the source of skill and knowledge. Where did you work, and what habits did you probably pick up there. What food culture were you exposed to and how will this carry over into a new property? The most important part of your career should be/have been getting the right experience to open the next doors. Usually this means starting low and suffering for some time. Your next employer or your future investor is not buying your smile but your history. He is going to choose and pay for all those years in your portfolio. It is what it is. More attractive history is more difficult and less financially rewarding than less attractive history. Once your path is set, you have that to promote.

Proven Performance / known quality of product: If you have shown that you can consistently put out plates of a given quality or run a facility in a management position, you have a valuable sales point. Or several.
 
Character/Behavior: Part born, partially acquired, it’s the piece of you only the real professionals are going to see. While people lacking character make food news (frequently until someone asks, what ever happened to xxxx), professional employers and smart investors are looking for Eagle Scouts to watch over their interests. Wouldn’t you? Character covers people skills, reliability, sobriety, grace under fire, sobriety, honesty, sense of community – egocentricity evidenced in mounds of self promotion is anti character. Are you going to be there when you’d rather be somewhere else if there is an emergency? Are you going to be rude of kind to your staff? Will you be able to push your agenda, or will you let your staff walk all over you?  Do you listen to criticism, or are you so insecure that you will grumble and quit after a few tries. Nobody wants a person with issues managing their kitchen or dining room. Smart management recognizes, respects and is willing to compensate character.
 
Visibility:  (Press/Media/The IT-Chef Factor) This is where you get to pull out those glossies.  If you want to play in the A Leagues, you have to pull yourself in the A Leagues. What worked for Jeremiah Towers once upon a time won't work for you.  Trust me on this. The sous chef of Grammercy or the Chef de Cuisine of Spago you has options that the Executive Chef of Joe’s Grill doesn't, even if Joe’s food knocks the socks off the French Laundry. Visibility is a bargaining point, however, only if it is coupled with stability. Caveat: Smart owners, and who wants to work for dumb ones, know that there is such a thing as the over exposed media whore (Hey, you work in kitchens. Deal with it) who spends more time touting themselves than their restaurant. There is such a thing as too much press.
 
Stability/Commitment: “The reason I have only stayed at my jobs for a year is that I wanted to get as much experience as possible, but now I am ready to settle down.” Get a clue, sonny. The smart world knows that you are either easily swayed by a slightly better offer, that you are not good at dealing with frustration, or that you haven't been able to keep the jobs much longer. Commitment is at the top of the hiring requirements of the Danny Myers of the world. A minimum of two years and change for management positions is lowest valid commitment. People with stable backgrounds pick and choose. People with an interesting variety of known houses get a lot of curiosity interviews and the occasional job that doesn't last all that long. Proven commitment counts. Fortunately  a lack of committed history is one of the easiest things to fix in a career. Just stay there.
 
Maturity: Chronological and otherwise. This is part of character, but it comes with age and experience. 22 year old whiz kid stars are so 90’ and so Gordon Ramsey/Top Chef crowd fodder. Seasoning makes for good decision making. This does not mean that at 45 you are going to get a chef job right out of culinary school, and if your school told you that, demand your tuition back.
 
Youth: Generally referred to as energy, which is not a privilege of youth, youth is a two edged sword. Let’s face it, this industry takes time to learn and level headedness, often age related. When “some young guy” is required as an Executive (which I am not permitted to take in to consideration) they mean “some cheap guy”, or worse, someone who will go to the matt doing something his youthful eagerness will not let him see as impossible. Youth is a great positive for learning ability, attitude and formability. Depending on the job, a younger person may be able to pick up sooner and run faster, but those with experience only roll their eyes at Gordon Ramsey awarding a restaurant to a 23 year old who really deserves the opportunity to learn and be mentored before hurling herself into the infinite days of a kitchen manager.  Some great chefs make it in their early twenties, but on the whole “youth” in a request for a manager tends to take money off the table. (You leave the green zone at about 29 to 32),
 
Proximity: Generally speaking, the more local chef, even with the lesser qualities, has a better chance at the job.
 
Professionalism: Beyond experience, knowledge and character is how a person deals with the challenges of accepting, carrying out and leaving a position. It covers diplomacy and integrity. “A true professional” is a term that disappeared for a while in job searches, but is returning. It’s not something that is restricted to your employer, but it covers how you deal with purveyors, follow through with job applicants, whether you build a new staff or steal the old one when you leave a position and how you deal with people you find tedious.
 
Formal Training: It’s chic to say that formal training doesn’t count. It does. Many jobs require it. I can name a dozen top chefs who have risen to the front of their profession without it and never have to think about it again, but I could name a lot more who did the in the trenches route and consistently struggle to get ahead.  Formal training ranges from private cooking schools (Tante Marie’s in San Francisco is a jewell) to Culinary Institutes like the CIA, the French Culinary Academy or New England Culinary Institute to Community Colleges and Junior College certificate programs. ACF certification is a second path to formal training. Apprentice programs, where they still exist, are highly recognized training routes. Depending on the job, formal training may put thousands of dollars on the table, but not without the other prerequisites. Courses and various certification may be important.  ACF certification is counter productive in some areas, but highly desired in others.
 
Specialty cuisines/banquet or unique skills: Depending on where you are looking these can be the most important part of your personal package. True garde manger ability, ice carving, or molecular cuisine, for instance.  Obviously they need to be paired with other assets from knowledge to character, but employers seeking a particular set of abilities and knowledge will respect and compensate a chef who has taken the time to develop it. If the employer is not seeking a hard to find specialty, however, they mean nothing.
 
Quality Volume History: Knowing  not only how food gets made is good for small restaurants which do n ot generally have the resources to compensate well. Volume exposure is often a required attribute for some very desirable jobs.
 
Appearance: Let’s say presentation, to be politically correct. This includes our speech habits, your level of dress and grooming. Physical attributes hardly count at all. Attractive people, that is people who are clean, nicely dressed and well groomed without perfume make a better impression and are more likely to be able to choose from several jobs than people who aren’t . The packaging is part of the sales pitch.

Title: Sometimes of value. Sometimes not. If, however, you are buying up (and in this case it is not selling) you can expect less compensation than if you were taking an equivalent position. If you have been the grand emperor of food production for the Hackensack Zoo, then the title doesn't mean a lot. Take care with inflated titles, as they can get in the way. This is especially true for Executive Chefs granted the title of Food and Beverage Director to save money.

Current Employment: Simple. Being currently employed and not frantically looking for something else generally raises the ante. Being unemployed and desperate lowers it. Don't leave until you know what you want. Entertain offers but with caution when they come.
 
 
What’s it all worth?

"How long's the string? Well, it depends on the size of the box." Chefs make from $35, 000 (yes, still) to over a million dollars. Some qualities can actually raise the offering of an employer - the perfect provenance, exceptional management skills or professionalism, wide recognition of talent and taste - while the lack of others will lower compensation offerings. More important, however, is that without the right components to proffer you don't get the interview or the job at any price. Some things like good character and stability are  necessary for just about any jobs, while others should guide your search.. Qualities are compensated where they apply to the job. You can see 20 - 30 added onto the salary for a high end Mung chef or an Executive with exceptional Garde Manger skills only if the location is seeking that and there aren't a lot around. Supply and demand rule. Stability usually doesn't mean more than $10,000, and is important only when the employer really wants the chef. As the executive chef of a tiny tapas house you are worth more to the man opening a small plate restaurant than you are to the Grand Hyatt seeking a banquet chef. The banquet chef from the Grand Hyatt is worth probably nothing to the small plates restaurant, but has good shot at a country club Executive Chef or Executive Sous Chef, where his experience will be extremely valuable. The biggest ticket is probably provenance plus stability. Suffering the rigors of a great kitchen means being able not only to command top prices but to pick and choose along a career and to attract investors when your time has come. The opposite - taking better paying and more emotionally gratifying positions with lower demands reduces options and lowers lifetime compensation by as much as half or more.
 
It depends on you and how you have handled your career or handle it in future. If you are still building it, pay attention, because the difference between selling only what you have and gaining qualities to sell in the future will mean hundreds of thousands of dollars in your lifetime earning capacity. If you don't have a great palate but are a good organizer (talent vs knowledge) know that and figure out how to maximize your organizational strength while augmenting your culinary skills. You want to offer this to someone who appreciates it and will compensate those skills. If you are enormously talented and completely disorganized, you need to either find a place which will both appreciate your gift while it will balance it with the necessary discipline and rigor. “Follow your bliss” is wildly misinterpreted. Bliss don’t cut it, but following your aptitude and developing your other culinary production and management assets do.