Career · Your own business and management
Small business owner
Creates and runs their own small business: a shop, a workshop, a cafe or a service.
Career overview
What a day looks like
The owner decides what to do and how: looks for clients, counts the money, and agrees terms with suppliers and helpers. The work gives freedom, but it also means answering for the result and coping with uncertainty.
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.
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
Invent a small venture and work it out
Choose an idea, such as cleaning sneakers or looking after plants, and work out on paper what is needed and what you could earn.
In six months
Talk to people who sell
Ask people you know who run their own business how they started and what turned out to be unexpected.
In a year
Try selling something small
Agree with your parents and offer something of your own to people you know. Write down what worked and what did not.
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.