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| Family Practice |
Recipe for Success
Richard John Pietschmann
03/01/2005
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When Clifton Haley, the former chairman and CEO of Budget Rent a Car, set out to find a new private chef for his family’s remote island estate in the northern Great Lakes, he did so educated by three previous failed attempts. The last one had been sobering. “We took the recommendation of an acquaintance who ‘knew’ a chef, but we had to fire him within 90 days when we concluded that he was lazy, not well trained and in way over his head.”
Due diligence became the obvious order of the day in hiring the next chef. Haley says specialty search firms do a very good job of referring excellent, well-screened, professional chef candidates, but he decided to undertake the hunt personally. A “creative” classified advertisement placed in a Chicago newspaper elicited 250 responses. “Ask for a handwritten ‘why you want the job’ cover letter to the resumé,” he advises. “You can learn a lot from what someone puts in a personalized letter.”
Haley rated applicants “against a rubric of their experience and background and our principal requirements, such as wanting daily baked bread.” Chefs surviving the first cut received a personal phone call explaining the position, housing and compensation package, and asking questions about skills, why the applicant was interested in being a private chef, hobbies and marital or significant- other status. From these answers, Haley determined which candidates he would meet face-to-face to assess chemistry and to emphasize details of the position. “It is crucial that you specify details of your lifestyle, living conditions for the chef, if provided, and requirements for flexibility and nonstandard work hours,” he advises.
TOP VIEW
Private chefs work exclusively for a family or company, often bringing formidable culinary skill and experience to the job. In return, employers offer these professionals competitive salaries, benefit packages and other perks. Before handing the ladle to a private chef, however, it is essential to perform thorough due diligence to make sure candidates for employment meet your needs—and you meet theirs. |
For the next stage in the process, Haley flew final candidates to his island home for a look around “so the chef gets to conduct his own due diligence of the personal environment and the external environment of the neighborhood.” He asked chefs to cook a complete evening meal, including choosing the wines. “Let the chef select the menu, but ensure he or she has everything needed to prepare the meal.” The final step was an exhaustive reference check.
Ross M. Kaplan, a busy Chicago-area banquet executive chef with a crew of 38 and 28 years of experience in the restaurant business, was one of the chefs left standing after this rigorous, time-consuming process. “When he flew me to the island, the first thing he did was hand me the keys to a brand new Ford Expedition and tell me to look around. He showed me a 300-acre farm where I would be living in a nice three-bedroom home. There was a barrage of questions. Have you canned fruits and vegetables? Have you butchered meat before? Do you know where maple syrup comes from? Are you self-sufficient? Can you make hors d’oeuvres at a moment’s notice? Does having to prepare one more plate at the last minute bother you?”
Kaplan says that the job offer that finally arrived featured a generous compensation package: a fair salary, a home to live in, paid health insurance, the Expedition and free gas. “And all I had to do was the very thing I love to do most in life: cook.”
That was more than six years ago, and Kaplan is happily with the same employer. He cooks dinner six nights a week, and lunch or breakfast only rarely. Dinner guests show up twice a week on average. Sometimes he travels with the Haley family to their other homes in Florida, California, South Carolina and Chicago, but he ends up getting about four weeks off every year.
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