Lack of Bartending Experience Is No Excuse

By Jeremy Sherk

Many people have a difficult time landing a bartending job because they have no experience, yet to get experience they need a job! It’s the classic catch 22.

It doesn’t have to be this way though. When putting together your resume and preparing for an interview, you need to look at your work history and get a little creative on how you present yourself.

Think about the employer’s wants, needs and problems, and how you can fit the mold perfectly to solve them. If you have no bartending experience, what kinds of skills will you bring from previous jobs?

• Communication skills
• Sales experience
• Efficiency
• Personality
• Customer service
• Able to stay calm in high-pressure situations
• Extensive knowledge of wines, cocktails, or spirits

It doesn’t matter if you’ve never bartended before. It’s all about how you use and present what experience you do have. If you have no bartending experience, look back at what work experience you have and how you can make it “bartending relevant” to convince the employer that you’re more than capable of being a bartender.

• Have you worked in any customer service position at all?
• Were you required to interact with people in any previous jobs?
• Were you on the phone a lot?
• Have you worked in any sort of stressful, high pressure environment?
• Have you worked in a setting that required you to move very fast?
• Have you ever worked in sales?

For example, let’s say you worked in a retail setting like a clothing store as a sales associate, you wouldn’t want to say…

• Stacked and sorted clothing neatly.

You’d want to talk about your sales experience, the use of your personality, your communication skills, and how you dealt with people. Your goal should be to extract as much “bartending relevant” experience from your work history as possible. For example…

• Was the top sales associate through use of product knowledge and personality.

Or to improve the sorting clothing example by highlighting your efficiency and ability to multi-task…

• Efficiently maintained presentable display of clothing while gladly taking care of customer inquiries.

Those are just two quick, rough examples but do you understand what I’m saying? When you structure your work experience this way on your resume you’re giving the bar manager something to work with. You’re convincing them that you can bartend and make the club money through speed and sales.

I’ve seen resumes submitted for bartending jobs that have points like…

• Microsoft Office proficient
• Ability to type 60 wpm
• Assisted in migrating users to an Exchange Server
• Supported users on RN handheld and network printers

Points like those really add no value to your bartending resume. In fact, I’d say that they decrease the value of it. Do yourself a favour and leave anything that isn’t relevant to bartending off of your resume. Tap into your resource bank of work history and extract skills that you have which are inherent to being a bartender. (e.g. customer service, product knowledge, personality, sales, etc.)

Take your previous work experience and mold it specifically to fit the requirements of a bartending position. Even if you feel you don’t have much experience to draw from, I believe there’s always something bartending relevant you can pull from a previous job and present on your resume. Using three bullets from the list above, let’s analyze them closer and extract experience from those jobs that could be related to bartending…

• Ability to type 60 wpm

So from that point we know they can type fast. If I were this person I’d simply state my ability to handle a workload quickly and leave it at that. There’s no need to go into detail. You gain more in this instance by not being specific.

• Assisted in migrating users to an Exchange Server

That statement means nothing to an employer wanting to hire a bartender. But it actually has a lot of potential. This person works in IT, that we know. I’ve worked in IT myself and it can be a very stressful environment. There would also be leadership and problem solving skills needed to pull of the task of migrating users to an exchange server.

So instead of that bullet point above, the person could communicate how when at that job they stayed calm in a stressful environment, lead other people, and solved problems efficiently. All traits necessary to being a bartender.

• Supported users on RN handheld and network printers

This person would definitely require some sort of customer service skills to do that job. As well as problem solving skills and the ability to work fast if they were supporting a large number of people.

So do you see what I’m talking about? We’ve just taken seemingly useless bullet points on a resume and extracted experience from them that can be directly related to bartending. This is exactly what I mean when I say, “tap into your resource bank of work history and extract skills that you have which are inherent to being a bartender.” And all we had was one bullet point to work with! I’m sure there are plenty of other tasks these people performed on the their jobs where the same thing could be done.

Now, if you do have bartending experience, what makes you better than anyone else applying?

• Did you achieve the highest sales where you’ve worked?
• Do you have a strong clientele base that you’ll attract to their bar?
• Do you have any other awards, credentials, or recognition for your skills in bartending?

Be specific. Whatever benefits you have to offer, focus in on them like a laser as you present them on your resume. The more specific, the better. For example…

• Consistently broke Liquid Nightclub’s nightly sales records, the highest being $4,012.67.

You would “bullet” this type of statement under your previous work experience. If you sold clothing or worked in any other similar industry you can phrase your bullets the same way. Make it as powerful, compelling, and specific as possible. The use of specific numbers or percentages solidifies your bullet points, adds impact, and makes your claims more believable.

The Make Money Bartending program will give you the tools, techniques, and confidence to land a bartending job as quickly as possible – even without experience. Learn more >