Career · Your own business and management
Hotel receptionist
Welcomes guests, checks them in and sorts out their questions while they stay at the hotel.
Career overview
What a day looks like
The receptionist welcomes guests at the desk, handles the paperwork and hands out keys. After that they answer questions, suggest where to eat and what to see, and solve small problems guests run into. The work is often done in shifts.
Try it yourself this week
30 minutes
Plan a class event on paper
- Come up with an event: a board game tournament, a clean-up day, a movie night. The budget is zero.
- Write down the goal, date, place and a to-do list: who does what and by when.
- Write down three things that could go wrong and a plan B for each.
- Read the plan out loud or show it to one person. Note what you enjoyed most: coming up with ideas, sharing out tasks or reaching agreements.
What you'll learn about yourself: Whether you like bringing people and tasks together into one whole — and whether you're ready to take responsibility if something falls through.
What you can do next
Next 3 months
Write a guide for a guest
Imagine a guest has come to your home from another city. Write what to show them and where to eat nearby.
In six months
Practise greeting in different languages
Learn a greeting and a few polite phrases in English and prepare to say them aloud.
In a year
Ask someone who does this job
Through people you know, and together with your parents, find out what a receptionist's shift is like and how they deal with unhappy guests.
What it pays
No verified information is available in this section yet.
Where to study
No verified information is available in this section yet.
How to get into college
College gets you a profession faster than university. You can apply after grade 9 or after grade 11.
- Colleges accept students both after grade 9 and after grade 11. After grade 9 you study longer — about 3 years 10 months; after grade 11, about 2 years 10 months. The exact length depends on the college and the specialty.
Source: kchk.edu.kz (opens in a new tab) - About 80% of students admitted to colleges in the 2024/25 school year study on a state order, which means in state-funded places (in 2023/24 it was about 70%). But each college and each specialty has its own number of state-funded places.
Source: inbusiness.kz (opens in a new tab) - There are also paid colleges. For example, training as a nurse at ADILMED costs 450,000 ₸ per year. Check the price and conditions on the college's website.
Source: adilmed.kz (opens in a new tab)
UNT: which subjects to take for university
The UNT (Unified National Testing) is Kazakhstan's national university entrance test. You need it to get into university after grade 11.
- The UNT 2026 has three compulsory subjects: History of Kazakhstan, Reading Literacy and Mathematical Literacy. On top of these, you take two profile subjects, chosen to match your specialty.
Source: testcenter.kz (opens in a new tab) - In total, the test has 120 questions (maximum 140 points) and you get 4 hours. The format is the same as in 2025.
Source: testcenter.kz (opens in a new tab) - Profile subjects depend on the group of specialties. For example: information technology — Mathematics and Computer Science; nursing and veterinary medicine — Biology and Chemistry; electrical engineering — Mathematics and Physics; law — World History and Fundamentals of Law. The full list is published by the National Testing Center.
Source: testcenter.kz (opens in a new tab) - For creative specialties (for example, media and design), you take History of Kazakhstan and Reading Literacy through the UNT, and two creative exams at the university itself.
Source: testcenter.kz (opens in a new tab) - Some universities have their own admission rules. Nazarbayev University, for example, requires a UNT score of at least 85, a GPA of 4.0 and English at IELTS 6.0 level.
Source: nu.edu.kz (opens in a new tab)
Courses and opportunities
No verified information is available in this section yet.
History of the career
No verified information is available in this section yet.
Well-known people in this field
No verified information is available in this section yet.