How to Get a Bar Job with No Experience in 2026 (A 7-Day Plan to Your First Trial Shift)

Most people who want a bar job with no experience are stuck on the same problem: every job ad says ‘experience preferred,’ and the candidates with experience get hired first. The fix is not learning more cocktail recipes. It is changing where you apply, what your CV says, and how you walk in.

This guide is a 7-day action plan. By Day 7 you have applied to between 15 and 30 venues with a CV that bar managers actually read. People who follow it often get a trial shift within about 1 to 2 weeks. Hospitality is short of staff: in the UK alone, the ONS counted around 121,000 hospitality vacancies in July to September 2024. The shortage works in your favour. You just have to act like someone who knows that.

EBS graduates get one extra channel in this market: access to MatchStaff (ebsmatchstaff.com), EBS’s own job platform, where bars, restaurants, hotels and clubs in countries including the US, UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and Australia post roles for EBS graduates. EBS says the platform has hundreds of job opportunities.

Every step below is built on what bar managers tend to look for in entry-level candidates. Sources are listed at the end. The employers and job boards named below are UK examples. The method works in any city, and where there’s a general equivalent elsewhere, it’s in brackets.

How do you get a bar job with no experience?

Walk in to 15 to 25 bars and pubs in person, between 3pm and 5pm on a weekday, with a printed one-page CV that leads with customer-facing experience and your exact availability. Start with high-volume bars and busy pubs, not cocktail bars, and say one specific thing about each venue. Offer to do a trial shift. People who do this consistently often get a trial shift within about 1 to 2 weeks, and the trial shift is where the hiring decision is made.

There are three reasons most beginners fail at this. The first is applying online only, which puts you in a pile with hundreds of other CVs. The second is targeting the wrong venues. Craft cocktail bars are far more selective than busy high-volume pubs, which hire often and train on the job. The third is showing up at the wrong time of day. At 7pm on a Friday, bar managers are working service and have no time to talk to you. Mid-afternoon, they do.

Fix those three things first. The plan below does it one day at a time.

The 7-day plan: from zero to first trial shift

Follow it in order. The sequence matters because each day’s output feeds the next day’s action. Skip days and the whole thing collapses into ‘I applied to 40 places and got no response,’ which is the standard outcome and the one this guide is designed to avoid.

Day 1: Build the target list

Open Google Maps. Search ‘bars’ and ‘pubs’ near you. Walk yourself through a 2 km radius on foot. You are not looking for the best bars in town. You are looking for busy ones with high turnover: chain pubs, sports bars, music venues, hotel bars, and student-area bars. These are the venues that hire fastest and train on the job.

Build a list of 20 to 30 names in a simple spreadsheet. Columns: bar name, address, manager name (if you can find it on Instagram or the website), what they’re known for (drink, vibe, crowd), and a status column for tracking applications. Sort by venue type so you can target the easiest hires first.

• Top of your list: chain pubs (in the UK: Wetherspoons, Mitchells & Butlers, Greene King, Stonegate; elsewhere, the big pub, bar and hotel groups in your city). Many run apprenticeships or entry programmes designed for zero-experience hires.
• Middle: independent pubs, sports bars, music venues, busy high-street bars. They train on the job.
• Save for later: craft cocktail bars, hotel bars, restaurant bars. These want experience or a credential. Come back when you have one or both.

Day 2: Write a CV that bar managers actually read

Bar managers skim CVs fast. The ones that work are short, specific to bar work, and lead with personality. The ones that fail try to look professional and end up looking generic.

Use this structure. One page maximum. No photos of cocktails you made at home. No ‘objective’ paragraph that says you are passionate about hospitality.

• Header. Name, phone, email, city. That’s it. No date of birth, no full address, no LinkedIn unless it has something on it.
• Two-line opening. Why you want to work in bars, and one fact that sets you apart. Example: ‘Twenty-one, recently moved to Manchester from a customer-facing role in retail, looking to work behind a busy bar that gets a real crowd in.’
• Experience. Two or three jobs maximum. Lead with anything customer-facing: café, retail, restaurant front-of-house, event work, summer-camp counsellor, call centre, kids’ birthday party host. Each job: company name, role, dates, one line on what you did that matters for bar work (worked under pressure / handled cash / managed difficult customers / worked late shifts).
• Education. One line. School/college name, year, key qualifications only.
• Bartending-relevant skills. Any course you’ve taken, any cocktails you can make, any languages you speak. If you’ve done an EBS course or any responsible-service certification, this is where it goes.
• Availability. The single line bar managers look at most. Write your real availability, especially Friday and Saturday nights. Vague availability gets your CV moved to the bottom of the pile.

If your CV has no real bar credential to point to, this is where most people get stuck. A 4-week bartending course gives you something specific to put on it. The EBS International Bartender Course is four weeks of full-time training, 80% of it hands-on practice, and it’s open to complete beginners. EBS reports that 95% of graduates secure a bartending position within 3 months of finishing the course. Here’s what it costs and what you get, in one place:

• Price: around €2,000. Prices vary by school and date. The course page lists the cities, dates and current prices.
• Included: 4 weeks of full-time training (6 hours a day), a pre-course video pack, the EBS bartending certificate (EBS describes it as globally recognised), a 300+ page EBS bartender manual, and access to EBS MatchStaff, EBS’s own job platform with hundreds of job opportunities, once you graduate.
• Not included: travel to the school (course advisers can help you find the cheapest route). Accommodation is optional and paid separately: most students choose to stay in EBS accommodation, and details and prices vary by school.
• Payment: wherever you bank, you can pay in full (at booking or within 7 days) or in 3 instalments (20%, 40%, 40%) before the course starts. If you bank in France, the UK, Italy, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark or Norway, EBS Pay Later also lets you make a first payment at booking and pay the rest in 6, 12 or 18 monthly instalments after you graduate and find a job.

See the EBS course

Day 3: Print the CVs and plan the route

Print 25 to 30 copies of the CV. Plain white paper, single-sided. Buy a folder so they don’t get bent in your bag. Open Google Maps and plan a walking route through your target list, ordered by location, not by preference. You will visit between 8 and 12 venues per afternoon.

Pick your day. The best days to walk in are Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday between 3pm and 5pm. Bar managers are usually at the venue prepping for the evening shift. They are not buried in service. They have a few minutes to talk to you.

Avoid Monday (managers in admin), Friday afternoon (pre-service rush), Saturday and Sunday (managers are tied up with the weekend rush). Avoid mornings entirely. Most bars are closed or being cleaned.

Day 4: Walk in, hand over the CV, ask the manager directly

This is the day everything compounds. The script is short and the same at every venue.

1. Walk in. Don’t loiter at the door. Walk straight to the bar.
2. Ask the person behind the bar: ‘Is the manager around? I’m dropping off a CV for bar work.’
3. If the manager is there, hand the CV over directly. Say: ‘I’m looking for bar work. I know you might not be hiring right now, but I wanted to drop my CV in person. Here’s why I’d be a good fit for [bar name].’ Then one specific sentence about the venue: a drink, the crowd, the music.
4. If the manager is not there, leave the CV with the bartender. Ask when the manager is usually in. Note it down. You will come back.
5. Thank them. Walk out. Move to the next venue.

Total time per venue: 90 seconds to 3 minutes. In an afternoon you can hit 10 to 12 bars. A walk-in usually gets you further than an online application, because the manager has put a face to your CV.

Do not apologise for not having experience. Do not over-explain. Do not stay longer than the conversation needs. The manager has work to do. Confident and brief beats charming and long every time.

Day 5: Follow up with the venues you couldn’t reach

Some bars will not have had a manager on site. Some will have said ‘send your CV by email.’ Today is the day you do both.

For the ‘email it in’ venues: send the email same day. Keep it short. Subject line: ‘CV — bar work — [your name].’ Body: three sentences. ‘Dropped my CV in at [bar name] yesterday afternoon. Attaching it here as you suggested. Available immediately, especially Friday and Saturday nights. [Your name].’ Attach the CV. Send.

For the ‘manager wasn’t in’ venues: return at the time the bartender told you. Hand the CV directly to the manager this time. Use the Day 4 script. Bar managers notice the candidates who came back. It signals reliability before you’ve worked a single shift.

Day 6: Apply online to the venues you couldn’t visit

Online applications usually get the fewest replies, so they are last in the sequence. Use this day to cover venues outside your walking radius and any large chains that only accept online CVs.

• Caterer.com and HOSCO are hospitality-specific job boards (Caterer.com is UK-focused; HOSCO lists roles internationally). Every listing is a hospitality job, so you spend less time filtering than on general boards.
• Indeed and LinkedIn have huge volume and huge competition. Apply to roles posted within the last 7 days only. Older listings have either been filled or are deliberately left up for talent-pool building.
• Local bartender Facebook and WhatsApp groups are underrated. Almost every European city has one. Bar managers post short-notice gaps there before they appear on Indeed.
• MatchStaff (ebsmatchstaff.com) is EBS’s own job platform, open only to EBS graduates. Bars, restaurants, hotels and clubs post roles there, and access comes with completing the EBS course.
• Chain pub direct portals (in the UK: Wetherspoons, Greene King, Mitchells & Butlers, Stonegate, Marston’s; elsewhere, the careers pages of the large pub, bar and hotel groups). These hire constantly for entry-level roles and often accept online applications with a fast turnaround. Mitchells & Butlers runs a Bar and Waiting Apprenticeship for people with zero experience.

Day 7: Prepare for the working trial

If you’ve followed the plan, by Day 7 you have between 20 and 30 venues that have your CV and have spoken to you directly. Some will already have called. Most will not. That’s expected. The follow-up flow is what closes the gap.

When a call or message comes in, the conversation will be short. They will ask three things: when can you start, can you do Friday and Saturday nights, can you do a trial shift this week. Answer yes, yes, and yes, unless it is genuinely impossible. A trial shift is the hiring decision, not the interview.

On the trial shift, bar managers tend to watch for three things:

• Can you stay calm when the bar gets busy. Speed and composure under pressure matter more than technical skill at this level.
• Do you ask before you guess. If you don’t know how to make a drink or where something is kept, ask. Pretending costs hours of correction later.
• Can you remember a multi-drink order. Repeat the order back to the customer before you start. That one habit alone separates the candidates who get hired from the ones who don’t.

If you’ve done a course, this is where the muscle memory pays off. You will not be asked to make a Negroni at hiring speed on your first trial. You will be asked to clear glasses, restock fridges, pour beers in sequence, and learn the POS (the till system). Move with intent. Don’t disappear into the back. When you finish a task, ask the head bartender what they want done next. The EBS course is built for this moment: 80% of the four weeks is practical training.

Train before you apply — see EBS courses

Which bars hire fastest for people with no experience?

Not every venue is realistic in your first week. Here are the tiers ranked by realistic hit rate for a beginner, based on how those venues structure their hiring.

Venue type	Hit rate	What they look for	Pay tier
Chain pubs (e.g. Wetherspoons, Greene King in the UK)	High	Reliability, availability, attitude	Entry
Nightclubs and music venues	High	Energy, late availability, stamina	Entry
Sports bars and high-volume bars	Medium-high	Speed under pressure, basic drink knowledge	Entry to mid
Hotel bars (3- and 4-star)	Medium	Professional appearance, service skills, some training preferred	Mid
Restaurant bars	Medium	Wine/spirit knowledge, customer-facing experience	Mid
Cocktail bars / craft venues	Low for beginners	Training or proven experience required	Mid to high
5-star hotels and Michelin venues	Very low without credential	Course, references, language skills	High

If you want to end up at a cocktail bar in 6 to 12 months, the path is: chain or high-volume bar first → build the CV → cocktail bar second. Almost nobody walks into a craft cocktail bar on day one without either a credential or six months of bar work behind them. Trying to skip the first step is the most common reason candidates spend three months getting rejected. A course is the other way in. With a certificate on your CV and MatchStaff access, you can apply straight to hotel bars, restaurant bars and cocktail venues that usually pass over untrained CVs. It improves your odds there; it doesn’t replace the trial shift.

What to say when a manager asks ‘do you have any experience?’

This question is unavoidable. The wrong answer is ‘no, but I’m a fast learner.’ Bar managers hear that ten times a week. The right answer reframes the question into specific transferable skills, and ends with availability.

Honest answer template: ‘No bar experience yet, but I’ve done [specific customer-facing work] for [X months]. I’m reliable for weekends, especially Friday and Saturday nights, and I’d be happy to do a trial shift this week to show what I can do.’ That structure (acknowledge gap, list transferable skill, name availability, offer trial) works far better than the standard ‘fast learner’ response, because it gives the manager something concrete to say yes to.

If you have done a bartending course, mention it once and concretely. ‘I finished the EBS International Bartender Course in [month], so I know the basics of speed pours, classic cocktails, and the standard cocktail family tree. I haven’t worked a real bar yet but I’m trained.’ EBS describes its certificate as globally recognised, and venues that want EBS-trained staff can recruit them directly through MatchStaff.

Five mistakes that cost beginners the job

Most candidates who fail the first three months fail at one of the same five points. Each one is fixable.

1. Applying only to cocktail bars on day one. Craft cocktail venues are far more selective than high-volume pubs. Start with volume venues, build the CV, then move up.
2. Vague availability. ‘Flexible’ or ‘most evenings’ means ‘no.’ Bar managers need to know if you can do Friday at 6pm. If you can’t, say so plainly. Specific availability builds trust.
3. Showing up at the wrong time. Never walk in during service. Never walk in before the bar opens for the day. The 3-to-5pm window exists for a reason.
4. Apologising for inexperience. Every CV in the pile is from someone with no experience. Don’t draw extra attention to it. Lead with what you can do, not what you haven’t done.
5. Disappearing on the trial shift. If they say ‘come in Friday for a trial,’ confirm by message that morning. Arrive 15 minutes early. Bring a black t-shirt and black trousers unless told otherwise. The candidates who don’t get hired are usually the ones who showed up unprepared, not the ones who poured badly.

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take to get a bar job with no experience?

People who walk in to 15 to 25 venues with a printed CV and good availability often get a trial shift within about 1 to 2 weeks. Without the walk-in approach (online applications only), expect 4 to 8 weeks. Adding a 4-week bartending course shortens the timeline because the CV stops looking blank.

Can I really get hired at a bar with zero experience?

Yes. Hospitality has high staff turnover and a lasting shortage of workers: in the UK, sector turnover is around 52% a year, and the ONS counted around 121,000 hospitality vacancies in July to September 2024. Many bar managers prefer trainable beginners over experienced bartenders with bad habits. Reliability and good availability matter more than mixology knowledge for entry-level roles.

Do I need a licence to work behind a bar in Europe?

In most of Europe, no: there is generally no bartending licence like the ones some US states require. Rules still differ by country, region and venue, and some require responsible-service training or set a minimum age for serving alcohol, so check the local rules where you want to work before you apply.

Should I do a bartending course before I apply?

It depends on your goal. For an immediate entry-level role at a high-volume bar or chain pub, no, you can be hired without training. For a faster route into cocktail bars and hotel bars, yes. The EBS International Bartender Course is 4 weeks, around €2,000, and includes a globally recognised EBS certificate, mostly hands-on training (80% practical) and access to the EBS MatchStaff job platform after you graduate. Prices vary by school and date, and travel and accommodation aren’t included. EBS reports that 95% of graduates secure a bartending position within 3 months of finishing the course. You can pay in full, in 3 instalments before the course, or with Pay Later (for banks in France, the UK, Italy, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Norway).

What should I put on a bar work CV with no experience?

Lead with customer-facing experience from any previous role (retail, café, events, restaurant front-of-house). Add transferable skills: working under pressure, handling cash, multitasking, working late shifts. Include any responsible-service certification or bartending course. End with specific availability. Friday and Saturday nights are the line bar managers look at most.

What do bar managers actually ask in a working trial?

Bar managers watch for three things during a trial shift: can you stay calm when it gets busy, do you ask before you guess, and can you remember a multi-drink order. Technical skill matters less than composure at the entry level. Repeat orders back to customers, ask the head bartender what’s next when you finish a task, and don’t disappear into the back.

Your next move

If you’ve read this far, you know a bar job with no experience is realistic. What’s left is picking the route that fits your money and your timeline. There are two, and they work well together.

• Start the 7-day plan this week. Build the list, print the CVs, walk in. If you walk in to 15 to 25 venues, a trial shift within about 1 to 2 weeks is a realistic target. It costs nothing but printing and time.
• Add a credential first and unlock MatchStaff. If your CV has nothing to point to and you want to skip the chain-pub stage, a 4-week course gives you something concrete to put on it. Whether it pays off is maths you can check yourself: the course price (around €2,000) divided by what you can save each month from bar pay where you live. For local pay, check the rates in current bar job ads in your city (Day 6 lists where to look). It also lets you apply to venue tiers that usually pass over untrained CVs.

Both work. Many people do both: start applying immediately to high-volume venues to bring in income, then take a course 3 to 6 months in to move up to cocktail bars and hotels. Already working behind a bar? Look at EBS’s 10-day Advanced Bartending Course instead: it’s built for working bartenders (cordials, syrups, infusions, fermentation, re-distillation) and is strictly not for beginners.

See EBS courses in 19 cities · 4 weeks · Flexible payment options

Sources

1. UK Hospitality. Worker shortages campaign. ukhospitality.org.uk/campaigns/workforce — Background on hospitality worker shortages and staffing.
2. Moore Kingston Smith. UK hospitality labour shortages 2024. mooreks.co.uk/insights/addressing-labour-shortages-in-the-hospitality-sector — ONS: ~121,000 hospitality vacancies (Jul–Sept 2024); 52% sector turnover rate.
3. European Bartender School. International Bartender Course. barschool.net/za/courses/international-bartender-course — EBS reports that 95% of graduates secure a bartending position within 3 months of finishing the course; 80,000+ students trained; industry leader since 1999; 4 weeks full time, 80% practical training; what’s included (certificate, manual, pre-course video pack, MatchStaff access with hundreds of job opportunities); accommodation optional, travel not included; payment in full, in 3 instalments before the course, or Pay Later for banks in 9 European countries (6, 12 or 18 instalments). Prices vary by school and date.
4. Mitchells & Butlers Careers. How to get a bar job with no experience. mbcareersandjobs.com/blog/2024-7/how-to-get-a-bar-job-with-no-experience — Bar and Waiting Apprenticeship; Level 2 Hospitality Team Member; no-experience hiring approach.
5. European Bartender School. How to become a bartender with no experience. barschool.net/uk/blog/bartender-with-no-experience — Industry perspective on what bar managers look for; barback pathway; transferable skills.
6. Indeed UK. How to write a CV for bar work with no experience. uk.indeed.com/career-advice/cvs-cover-letters/cv-bar-work-no-experience-uk — CV structure for entry-level bar candidates; recruiter perspective on transferable skills.
7. Indeed. How to become a bartender with no experience. indeed.com/career-advice/finding-a-job/become-bartender-no-experience — Recruiter perspective on personality vs experience; behavioural-interview framework.
8. EBS MatchStaff. The EBS-only bartending job platform. ebsmatchstaff.com — EBS’s own job platform connecting EBS graduates with bars, restaurants, hotels and clubs worldwide; access after graduating.
9. European Bartender School. 2022 Yearly Review. barschool.net/blog/ebs-2022-yearly-overview — 6,900 students from 65 countries in 2022.