These figures represent good news for chefs who hope to take their culinary careers to the open ocean. Each new ship that embarks carries hundreds or even thousands of hungry mouths and requires a large team of skilled cooks to feed them.

If life at sea appeals to you, check out the many culinary job opportunities on cruise lines. Several websites have detailed information about how to find employment on a cruise ship, usually through a recruitment agency. While you may not qualify for the highest-paying positions of executive chef or chef de partie, a job as sous chef or first cook could set you up for a promotion after a few successful contracts.

While not everyone is cut out for the long hours and close quarters of life on a cruise ship, the opportunity to travel, meet scads of new people, and earn a salary that can mostly be saved (room, board, and medical costs are covered by employers), is hard to pass up. Do your research and by this time next year you may be mastering the art of cooking to the rhythm of the ocean waves.

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Actors aren’t the only ones helping boost the employment of personal chefs, however. In 2006 The NewYork Times reported that the number of people using these services had grown by almost 50 percent since 2001. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were almost 5,000 private household cooks in 2006. With time at a premium and increased pressure to maintain dietary and physical health, the United States Personal Chef Association estimates that personal chef businesses have more than tripled over the last decade. The growth is expected to continue, with industry revenues projected at close to $600 million by 2012.

How does this trend affect the aspiring chef? Well, for one thing it might impact your course of study. Personal chefs, unlike their restaurant-owning counterparts, must be well-versed in the art of healthy cooking, since they’re working for the same clients each day. While restaurant diners often want to splurge on a decadent treat, the daily meals prepared by a private cook must be nutritionally balanced.

As you plan your culinary career, keep your options open. While chances are slim that you’ll ever set foot in Angelina Jolie’s kitchen, the possibilities of becoming a personal chef to a not-as-glamorous clientele are better than you might think.

There’s a job opening at the hottest startup in Silicon Valley that doesn’t require applicants to know the first thing about computers. The catch: You have to know the difference between béchamel and espagnole.

Facebook, the social-networking Web site with a $15 billion valuation, is hiring a corporate chef. The position looks like a winning lottery ticket for the culinary wiz who gets the job: Google’s corporate chef retired a millionaire shortly after the search engine went public.

The ideal candidate should have “knowledge of food and catering trends with a focus on quality, production, sanitation, food cost controls, and presentation” and, because it’s a startup after all, a “high sense of urgency,” according to the job description.

The Executive Chef is responsible for the leadership of the kitchen by managing and overseeing the activities of the entire kitchen as well as menu development and food quality through purchasing organic products, multi-cultural cuisine, kosher foods, etc. This position is also responsible for recipes including menu item presentation, lunch, corporate, and catering events. He/She is expected to maintain high standards by establishing food specifications and adhering to those specifications via recipes, portion control, presentation, safety and sanitation. This position is full-time and located in Downtown Palo Alto.

Here’s the full posting, via the tech gossip site Valleywag 

When you envision a future for yourself in the food industry, a career in cafeteria management might not make it into your daydreams. Sadly, this profession doesn’t attract the glamour or celebrity status of other jobs in the culinary world, however many would argue that cafeteria managers have as much, if not more, potential to impact the mouths they feed than their famous peers.

As the first line of defense against the growing epidemic of childhood obesity, cafeteria managers in schools across the nation have a responsibility and opportunity to provide balanced, healthy nutrition to the next generation. 

Rhiannon Hampson-Joven, manager of a high-school cafeteria that feeds 300 students daily, finds plenty of opportunities to help her diners stay healthy, from ordering trans-fat free cookies and fried foods to providing healthy and vegetarian choices for the students she feeds.

Hampson-Joven’s advice to aspiring cafeteria managers? “When it comes to certain things that you have total control over [i.e. sourcing healthier foods], try to be as assertive as possible with the administration, because it really is worth it.”

Finding ways to educate the holders of the purse strings to ensure budgetary support of higher-priced, healthy options can be challenging, but with the academic background in nutrition, health, and menu-planning offered by culinary arts schools, your powers of persuasion will be that much more convincing.

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