LO
Chef / cook — skills, knowledge and links
Where this job sits in the official classifications, what those classifications say it demands, and what it connects to. Every block names its source: our own judgements, the U.S. Department of Labor's O*NET, or the U.S. Department of Education.
How it connects#
O*NET also lists (no page here yet): Bakers · Cooks, Restaurant · Cooks, Private Household · Cooks, Institution and Cafeteria · Food Service Managers · Cooks, Short Order · First-Line Supervisors of Food Preparation and Serving Workers · Food Batchmakers
In the official classification#
Chefs and Head Cooks
Fit with this page: covers part of this page
Job Zone 3: medium preparation
See it on O*NET OnLine ↗Cooks, Restaurant
Fit with this page: covers part of this page
Job Zone 1–2: very little to some preparation
See it on O*NET OnLine ↗What O*NET rates highest#
From O*NET 35-1011.00 (Chefs and Head Cooks). Ordered by O*NET's importance rating; the words are O*NET's own scale anchors.
Transferable skills
- CoordinationVery important
- Social PerceptivenessVery important
- Time ManagementVery important
- Management of Personnel ResourcesVery important
- Service OrientationVery important
- InstructingVery important
- Judgment and Decision MakingVery important
- Complex Problem SolvingImportant
Knowledge
- Food ProductionVery important
- Production and ProcessingVery important
- Customer and Personal ServiceVery important
- Personnel and Human ResourcesVery important
- Administration and ManagementVery important
- MathematicsVery important
Work activities
- Training and Teaching OthersVery important
- Coordinating the Work and Activities of OthersVery important
- Developing and Building TeamsVery important
- Organizing, Planning, and Prioritizing WorkVery important
- Getting InformationVery important
- Coaching and Developing OthersVery important
Abilities
- Oral ExpressionVery important
- Problem SensitivityVery important
- Oral ComprehensionVery important
- Information OrderingVery important
- Deductive ReasoningVery important
- Speech ClarityVery important
Essential skills
- MonitoringVery important
- SpeakingVery important
- Critical ThinkingVery important
- Active ListeningVery important
- Reading ComprehensionVery important
Our task judgements#
O*NET says what this job demands. It does not say what automation is doing to it — that is what this site's 5 task judgements are for: 2 backed by a verified event, 3 platform inference. VOLO judgement
Sources and rules#
- Four kinds of source, and each block says which: this site's own judgements, O*NET, the U.S. Department of Education's CIP–SOC crosswalk, or something computed mechanically from those. Nothing on this page is a rating we made up.
- O*NET's importance ratings are used only to order and shorten the lists. They are never combined with this site's impact index or evidence counts.
- The fit between our page and an O*NET occupation is our judgement and is stated per code: same job, broader, part of it, or only the closest there is.
- O*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026 release, U.S. Department of Labor/Employment and Training Administration, CC BY 4.0. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. The translations of O*NET descriptors on this page are ours, not O*NET's.