race yourself. Two weeks ago, your hotshot line cook gave notice he was leaving for a competitor—not another hotel, but an upscale restaurant competitor. Not only that, he took the superstar waiter with him. The loss of the waiter was bad enough, but losing your best line cook caused major headaches.

When the line cook departed, you posted the job opening on the bulletin board of the employee lounge and on your website under the “Contact Us” link, advertised it in the classified section of the local newspaper, and asked all of your food and beverage friends for help. The result? All who applied—but two—were marginal candidates. The two? One is a recent graduate of a culinary school; the other has almost two years experience as a line cook at a wellrespected hotel. Both appear to be qualified. The dilemma? Trying to figure out who is the best person for the job. Does education surpass experience? Or is a degree in culinary arts eclipsed by a diploma in street smarts and on-the-job competence?

The human resources department tried to convince you that evaluating qualities innate in generational traits is a job qualification imperative. With the ever-present appalling turnover in the hospitality business, you said there wasn’t time to peg prospects by particular age groups. You even told HR that, according to the National Restaurant Association, over the next 10 years, the number of jobs in foodservice will grow one and a half times as fast as the U.S. labor force. The combination of high turnover and a shrinking labor pool means slim pickings. You joked, “Whenever I have a job opening, I ought to take the next warm body that applies.”

Before inviting those two prospects to an interview, HOTEL F&B decided to do some pre-interviewing, talking to educators and hoteliers to find out what they think. Does a formal culinary education matter? What about experience? Doesn’t that count for something? Does theory trump reality? What makes one candidate more acceptable than the other? Who will work hardest on the line?

MICHAEL COOPER, director of food and beverage, InterContinental Hotel, Cleveland "Commitment is vital. We don’t want turnover. Recruitment is tight. It would be foolish to make a decision based on whether he or she went to culinary school.

“It’s important that the candidate fits into our corporate culture and can work well with other people. Being a culinary graduate and a great line cook doesn’t necessarily mean you’d make a great chef. A lot of what a chef does is management: leadership and communication. Those skills do not necessarily come with a diploma, but grow and develop over time and through experience.”

CHRISTOPHER KOETKE, dean, Kendall College, Chicago “So much depends on what you are looking for. If the grad has been trained properly and has gone through a program that prepares him or her for the rigors of our industry, then you are not hiring someone who just fills a slot on the line. They have a broader view of the world and come to the job with a more educated perspective. Once they get up to speed, you have an asset on your hands—someone who can problem solve, think critically, someone who now has management potential.

“When culinary students graduate, they know who they are and what they’ve learned, and, at the same time, they know they don’t know everything and still have progress to make. The “experience piece” is missing. That’s up to you to massage and nurture.”

STUART MANN, dean, Harrah College of Hotel Administration, UNLV, Las Vegas “We often can’t wait around for the culinary or hotel school grad. The important consideration: Does this person have the talents and skills to do the job I’m asking him to do, independent of where he came from?

“Is this person you are about to hire a good team player so that kitchen morale remains positive under conditions of duress? Does he or she demonstrate a personality that fits in with the culture of the company?

“That being said, you don’t have to have a degree to get a good job, but you do need a degree to ascend to higher levels of management. Various functional areas of the business—marketing, accounting and finance, information systems, etc.—are taught in hotel and culinary schools. You don’t acquire that on the street.

“You have to look at the experiences the candidate has had and ask how do they interact with people, how well do they supervise? At every level of management, the most difficult problem in every job in every industry is not the technical aspects of the job, it’s the interpersonal relationships in dealing with people.”

FERDINAND METZ, president, Master Chefs, LLC, Beacon, New York (former president, Culinary Institute of America) “If you are looking at your business long term, go with the graduate. They have more knowledge—not more experience—to move up in the ranks and will, most likely, advance quickly through the organization because they have more skills and more exposure to different things. If he or she has a bachelor’s degree from the school, know that, in addition to learning cooking skills, the graduate has also been exposed to a management-oriented curriculum.

“Once you decide to hire the graduate, the expectations of his or her performance are higher than if you were to hire someone with no formal education. You have every right to expect more from a culinary graduate. Flip side: The graduate also expects more from you.

“No matter who applies for the job, look at skill sets, but look also for other characteristics: attitude, work ethic, and a willingness to adjust to the culture and environment of the new job.

“So, who do you hire? Culinary graduate or the candidate with a few years of experience? Short run, okay to go with the latter. Over a period of time, hire the graduate.”

ELIZABETH MULLINS, GM, Ritz-Carlton, Philadelphia “We need someone with a solid work ethic, the ability to learn and to take direction, a creative and driven person who has a passion for the art of cooking and wants a career in this business. If someone comes from a culinary school and doesn’t have the interpersonal skills, work ethic, or the ability to be part of our team, we may turn him or her down for the less academically qualified, but better-suited candidate.”

NICK NICHOLAS, owner, Nick’s Fishmarket of Hawaii, Boca Raton, Florida (former director of food and beverage, Boca Raton Resort and Club) “I like culinary school graduates because that means the kid wants to work in the business. He or she chose that line of work and made the commitment.

“It’s very generic what culinary grads learn in school. In a commercial kitchen, it’s a lot more specific: different cuisine, different chef making everything the way he wants to, not the way the culinary kid was taught. From restaurant to restaurant, the culture changes, the environment changes, the personnel changes, the sort of instruction changes. Adjustments must be made. The culinary graduate must understand that there will be deviations from what he or she thinks are absolutes.”

GEORGE VIZER, GM, Hyatt Regency McCormick Place, Chicago “Most culinary students have made a conscious decision to devote two years of their life to this business, reaching, upon graduation, a level of commitment to and perseverance and love for the art of cooking. Those are intangibles tough to find in someone without a culinary degree.

“Regarding the street smarts candidate: What’s the nature of their experience? Often, the experience they may have had at the hands of a chef is greater than the knowledge stockpiled by a graduate of a second- or third-tier culinary school with little or no reputation for quality. What they learn in those kitchens are valued techniques and a dedication to uncompromising quality that cannot be taught in any school.”

Stephen Michaelides is a frequent contributor to HOTEL F&B.