Career · Your own business and management
Sales assistant
Helps shoppers choose goods in a shop and answers their questions.
Career overview
What a day looks like
A sales assistant greets shoppers, finds out what they need and suggests suitable goods. They keep the displays tidy, put out stock and take payment. The work is done on your feet and in constant conversation.
Try it yourself this week
40 minutes
Come up with a small business and work out if it would pay off
- Choose an idea a school student could do: baking for a school fair, helping people with their phones, taking photos at a graduation party.
- Write down who would buy and why they'd buy from you in particular.
- Make a table: what the money goes on, what the price is, how many sales you'd need to get your costs back. Don't buy anything — this is a calculation on paper.
- Find two similar offers online and compare your idea with them. Write down what was more interesting: coming up with it, doing the numbers or imagining how you'd sell it.
What you'll learn about yourself: Whether turning an idea into a plan with numbers excites you — and whether the chance that buyers say no puts you off.
What you can do next
Next 3 months
Play seller and buyer
Ask a friend to choose an item in your home, and ask what they need and offer an option.
In six months
Watch how a shop works
In a shop nearby, see how the staff arrange goods and talk to people. Write down what seemed done well.
In a year
Ask someone who does this job
Through people you know, and together with your parents, find out what a shift is like and which customers can be difficult.
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.