So I have been baking and decorating cakes for a while now and love it : ) today I saw that the bakery down the road from my house is looking for a decorator,,yaayy: )
I am thinking of applying but don't know what to put on a decorators CV,, or should I just give my normal CV and a few pictures of my cakes ,, what do you guys suggest.
If you were applying what would you say and If you were hiring what do you look for..
Thanks in advance

I don't know what a CV is.

Often the work they need done is the grunt work of caking--perhaps filling and frosting and setting up for other decorator/s. Doing cakes from photos and are exactly planned out already and you follow the plan.

Then as time goes on and you can prove that you can get the work out -- then you might get some creative license within bounds.

So I'm just saying it probably ain't Ace of Cakes. And 99% of the time the bakery is taking a chance on a home baker. It's a gamble for them that they often loose.

Wanna know a little secret? As home cakers we often laugh about grocery store cakes--Commercial bakers laugh about how slow & inefficient home cakers are--how they can't cut it in the real world. Two way street.

Home cakers often ~and I'm not saying you~ but often have so much ego wrapped up in their work that if they don't get enough strokes and endless time for thier work they whine and pout become overwhelmed and offended.

You want to prove you are worth them taking a chance on you.

I guess the biggest thing is to find out the job requirements and see if you can handle that and can convince them you are willing to work into it.

Whoever wants to can take offense (as I stated above) But them's the hard knocks of landing and keeping a commercial decorating gig.

Take offense? Actually, I think you did a great job of pointing out both sides of the situation here. And it's very helpful to know some of the perspective of each and what it will take to be able to move from home baker into the business world of it. If people notice, when they watch Cake Boss, there is a "staple" fondant cake that is always in his cases up front, the one with the large fun flowers on it. Better to help someone be grounded and know the straight truth than to be disillusioned. I think you answered that very well. And I don't know what a CV either, but would like to know.

A CV (Curriculum Vitae) is a resumé.
I would tailor your CV to show what you have done with cakes, any fairs or shows you have been in, prizes you might have won and so forth. Explain how long you have been caking, who your customers are generally. But they will still want to see where you went to school and all the other normal stuff you have on the CV already.
You can take photos of your work to them, maybe arrange small pictures on one sheet and print the same size as your CV, and clip it to your CV.
You can go into more detail at an interview, and they might ask you to demonstrate what you can do, or you could offer if they don't ask.

Dayti has some great points.

I would be very careful about how much success you report. The 'both sides' that I presented upthread are valid. That you won contests means you would be farther from the worker they need--see what I mean. Watch the egos--they are everywhere.

If you are hiring in as the lone decorator--go for it--otherwise if you are to be part of a team I'd for sure keep the ribbons & awards to myself.

What's important is to find out what they need. Not to try & impress them as we home cakers like to do unless you are hiring in as head decorator. In either case you need to show how much you can do in the least amount of time possible.

-K8memphis This is exactly the kind of advice I was looking for, honest and straight up .
It takes me days to finish one cake, I cant imagine that being cost effective in the real bakery world. I know I wont really have creative independence but I think it would be a good step to figuring out how does the industry work.
I think It would be a better first step towards a possible cake business in the future.. 'u think..
thx Dayti I'll keep all the points in mind ,

Although no prizes for me yet , I mostly bake for my kids or their friends

Hit the nail on the head K8! I work in a grocery store bakery right now and just the other day I had someone come up to ask about getting a job there. I said we weren't actively hiring but they're always welcome to fill out an application. She then asked if we required experience and I said we didn't, we would train. She said, "Oh, because I've done a couple cakes before and I think it would just be so much fun to do this!"



I just kinda smiled and said "It's A LOT of work! But feel free to fill out an application!"

Yes, commercial bakeries are all about how many cakes can you do, not how cute you can make a cake.

K8 and Rose_N_Crantz, you bring up the important conundrum of speed - as a hobby decorator, I don't have the kind of speed one needs in a bakery, and probably won't have it unless I actually work in a bakery. Do the bakeries generally expect that speed will develop with an entry level position? I realize you can't be completely slow-as-molasses to start with, but LOL right now I can only dream of making a bc rose as quickly as my friend the former bakery employee.

I don't know it's just like any other job. You can't get it without experience but you can't get experience if no one hires you. But for this you could practice at home too. I think they figure it should develop quickly.

Lack of speed is the biggest gripe we read about when the home baker applies for, and gets, a job in a bakery. And it often causes the home baker to quit the job after a few days.

Another option is to ask if you can apprentice with them for a couple of weeks, to see if you can perform at their pace? That way you can have a test run and get some OTJ experience, while they'd be getting a couple of weeks of free labor. It's a win-win, unless you really need a paying job.

Theresa

thanks everyone for the tips and advice, I dropped my resume today,, lets see if I hear back from them,, : )

Good luck, I'll keep my fingers crossed for you.

I worked in a grocery bakery and developed a little speed, but then in a custom cakery where all the speed went out the window! We never did the same cake twice, so it was always a learning experience, every day, every cake. I hate the grocery store setting, cakes and set up. I hate bagging bread, and I HATE going into the freezer with my coat and gloves to dig down to the box of chocolate cake! But I hated the bad attitudes of the owner of the custom cakery, though I loved the work. I was slower than most in both places, lol. We had a lady at the grocery store that would crap out 60 (pre-iced, frozen) cakes an hour. She would open them all up and put them on racks, then line up 10 of them on the counter and just GO TO TOWN!!! It was gruesome to watch! No thinking, no rinsing the airbrush, no coordinating colors, no creativity. She'd make borders out of whatever tip was on the bag. She'd just squeeze the bag and drag it along, lol! If you think you can handle that, than go for it! It made me shudder! We would all package them for her. She would make a mess and have such shoddy work. But people bought them! I would get dizzy writing on them!

I hope you don't have to do this and wish you all the best!

BTW, I just told both places I had done cakes before and they both just had me prove it with some icing! No pictures, anybody can google "cake" and print out what they find.

Yes Custom Cakes and a grocery store bakery or bakery that turns out high volume are too different animals to me. I applied for a cake decorators job at a bakery and they were all about how fast you can do something and putting out sheet cakes, not my cup of tea so I actually declined the offer they gave me. I knew that wasn't the kind of environment I wanted to use my creativity for. I rather do the custom work of something different each day not can I get 50 prefrozen sheet cakes decorated in an hour. If you get the job you may learn to be faster so if that's what you're looking for then go for it but I wasn't looking to learn how to crank out premade sheet cakes for the masses. Ask yourself what you want to get out of it and if it's speed and learning fast paced production (if that's what they do) or is it new ideas/techniques and freedom to be creative. Whatever it is make sure it matches what they do or I think you may be disapointed and frustrated. I knew if I took that job that I would have quit before the week was over as well.....

Anytime we go into our local supermarkets or Walmart, we have to go look at and critique the bakery cakes. We've had more than our share of giggles over some of what we have seen. But every now and then they do get someone who does a nice job of decorating their cakes. Unfortunately, those people never stay for very long at all. I don't know if the stores have decided they take too long to get the quality design they are putting out or if the people get frustrated and quit, or a combination of the two, but they never do seem to stay for more than a couple months, at most.

From an employers point of view (for a high end custom bakery) I look at
1) Skills- how experienced and clean the persons work is.
2) Willingness to be trained a certain ay. Everyone has there own techniques and tricks but it's good to show eagerness to learn an execute the cakes to my standard an techniques.
3) Personality - working in a busy kitchen always requires a positive hard working individual.

This is all so true--and some of us are can blend into both worlds which is pretty cool in and of itself. It's quite an accomplishment to be able to not only matchy match someone else's final product but also follow their procedures in different shops at different times.

Also I had a former retail (full blown) bakery owner and at the time head decorator say to me he had not the slightest notion how to do a cake from home.

<high five>

I worked as a decorator, for a large grocery chain bakery for 9 of the 15 years I was with them. Often, I found myself working alongside newbie decorators who just couldn't keep up the pace and did quit after a few days. My job was all about how much you could produce in a shift but also- multitasking was key.As a decorator, I sometimes fried donuts, baked and bagged bread, made announcements, rotate stock, enter the dreaded freezer to put away product etc..etc...
I can assure you that my job had little to do with creativity- in fact they were very clear on the fact that cakes had to be replicated from pictures and had to have exactly so many roses or so many ounces of topping, and yes cakes were weighed periodically to make sure I was using the least amount of icing possible.
After that job, I took a 5 year break from decorating and have finally returned to it this last couple years-I'm finally learning how to be creative-use decorating tips other than #22, #3 and #104 (those three comprized 90% of the tips available to use, lol) Also, I'm learning how to bake well and make icing (I never even knew how to make ANY sort of cake icing until this year, I just always scooped it out of a 5 gallon bucket!)
If I were you I would play up a willingness to multitask,ability to work as a team player and cleanliness of work. Even though my employer was able to amazingly remove all creativity from the job- I still learned so much from my time there, how to organize big projects, getting through tedious work without going nuts, how to fix flops (God forbid we ever threw cake away even if it was split down the middle or not cooperating with the icing).
Maybe the bakery you are applying at is not like this- but it's good to walk into this knowing the not so fun side. Good Luck! In todays economy, ANY job is awesome to have!

That surely does not sound like a fun atmosphere to have to be working in. So I know how much nicer it must have been for you when he finally said that. Good for you.

[quote=
Wow! Just checked out your website and I am so impressed! To keep the thread on topic, how much do you rely on an employee? How many of those large high end cakes can you do in a week and how much help do you get? Your place is the kind of place I would love to work, I HATED the grocery store![/quote]

For me because I deal with detail oriented cakes, I rely on them to do alot to help out with the work I don't have time to do. As there skills build I trust them to do a little more decorating at a time. But to be honest if you like detailed custom cakes , it's almost best you start your own business.