Culinary schools have become the trendy and glamorous educational options of the twenty-first century. They are a very appealing option to many whose creative juices run towards cooking - they seem to be the route to the dream job. And they can be! Contrary to popular image, however, cooking school is no replacement for real restaurant work experience. And that experience is best had, in part, before the student ever starts to the cooking school because cooking school assumes a certain level of competence in the professional kitchen, which is very different from experience in the household kitchen.
What cooking school does too, in the United States, it teaches much of the technique that would be learned during a five year apprenticeship in Europe. After cooking school, more genuine kitchen experience is necessary. The experience that you gain prior to culinary school is to give you a solid foundation for your education while the experience that you acquire subsequent to cooking school is for the purpose of putting your new-found knowledge and skill to work and to build your resume. I took a year in France following my education at the California Culinary Academy doing journeyman work in a number of restaurants, small and large and doing every type of work from the most basic of prep to working as a saucier, sometimes in the same restaurant and the same day. This was to gain the experience of working with a number of fine and experienced Chefs. The money is not good.
In order to set up a good journeyman experience subsequent to cooking school, talk to your instructors to see if you can leverage their contacts. Send letters to Chefs of restaurants that intrigue you. Explain that you are, or will be, a new culinary school graduate and that you are willing to take tough work for poor pay in order to gain the experience of working with them. Bear in mind, if your focus is Thomas Keller and Jacques Pepin, they have five hundred applicants for every position that they can possibly fill, if they have any positions at all. Do contact them and put your best foot forward, but bear in mind that you will have a tough time getting positions in their kitchens. Look at excellent but lesser known Chefs and institutions. There are thousands of fine restaurants around the world, and not all of them have a name as recognizable as Thomas Keller at the helm, but they have fine Chefs with a wealth of experience to share.
After you have worked in a few restaurants and in a variety of positions you will need to found your career. Find work as a line cook, working as many of the stations as possible. Fill in for the Sous Chef on occasion and work your way into that position. Eventually you will transition into a chef position - be nice when you transition jobs for you never know when you will be back.
Do not be fooled - cooking school is not a foot in the door for a cushy life. It does get your foot in the door, but it is a hard life that feeds your passion.