Receptionist CV: example and tips for hotels and offices

Keywords that come up in receptionist job ads

Reception jobs fall into two groups. In a hotel, the job is about check in, bookings, guest service and often night shifts. In an office, at a law firm, a medical practice, a clinic or a large company, it is about receiving visitors, running the switchboard and keeping meeting rooms and post in order. The ads use different words, and many employers sort applications by them. Use the same words in your CV where they match what you have done. Our guide to an ATS-friendly CV explains how these systems read your CV. Most ads in Norway are in Norwegian, so it helps to know terms such as innsjekk (check in), sentralbord (switchboard) and gjesteservice (guest service). These words come up often:

• Hotels: check in, check out, bookings and reservations.
• Guest service, hospitality and handling complaints.
• Upselling room upgrades, breakfast and extra services.
• Property management systems (PMS), for example Opera, Mews or Visbook.
• Offices: switchboard, visitor management, post, meeting rooms and orders.
• Microsoft 365 with Outlook, Teams and Excel, invoicing and simple finance tasks.
• Cashing up, night audit and reports.
• Service minded, structured, good language skills and able to work shifts, evenings, nights and weekends.

Formal requirements: no licence, but duties you should know

There are no formal requirements for working in a reception. According to utdanning.no, a trade certificate in travel and tourism (reiselivsfaget) is a common route, with two years at school and two years in a company. The programme starts with the sales, service and tourism programme in upper secondary school. The old trade certificate in reception work has been replaced by the travel and tourism trade, but if you have it, include it with name and year. If you have worked in reception for a long time without a trade certificate, you can take one as an experienced worker through the praksiskandidat scheme. According to the Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training (Udir), this requires at least five years of varied experience. In an office, experience with customer service and administration often matters most, and courses or education in administration or finance should be listed with name and year.

In hotels, the reception has a duty many people do not think about. Under section 4-25 of the Immigration Regulations (utlendingsforskriften), hotels and other places offering overnight stays must keep a record of everyone who stays overnight, including name, date of birth, citizenship and date of arrival. Identity must be checked against valid ID, and for guests who are not Nordic citizens, the type and number of the travel document must be recorded. If you have done this at check in, you can write “guest registration and ID checks” in your CV.

If the reception sells beer or wine, section 1-5 of the Alcohol Act applies: the person selling or serving must be at least 18 for drinks with less than 22 percent alcohol and at least 20 for spirits. If you have passed the knowledge test on the Alcohol Act, or taken courses in first aid and fire safety, include them.

Example of a summary for a receptionist CV

The summary should say where you have worked, which systems and languages you know, one result or sense of scale with a number and what you are looking for. Here are two made up examples you can use as a pattern:

Example (hotel): “Receptionist with four years of experience at a 220 room chain hotel in central Oslo. Checks in up to 150 guests on busy days, is responsible for the night audit and had the highest upgrade sales in the reception two years in a row. Speaks Norwegian, English and Spanish. Looking for a role as shift supervisor in the reception.”

Example (office): “Structured receptionist with three years of experience at a law firm with 60 employees. Receives 30 to 50 visitors a day, runs the switchboard and is responsible for meeting rooms and ordering office supplies. Looking for a role with more responsibility for administration.”

Replace the numbers with your own, and only write what you can explain in an interview. You will find more examples in our guide to writing a CV summary.

Bullet points with results: weak versus strong

Everyone knows what a receptionist does. What the employer wants to know is how busy it was, what you were responsible for and what improved. Use the number of guests, rooms, calls and visitors, upselling in kroner and scores from guest surveys.

• Weak: “Checked in guests.” Strong: “Checked in and out up to 150 guests per shift at a 220 room hotel, with an average check in time under three minutes.”
• Weak: “Upselling.” Strong: “Sold upgrades and late check outs worth 120,000 kroner in 2025, the most of anyone in the reception.”
• Weak: “Handled complaints.” Strong: “Resolved complaints at the desk before guests left, helping lift the hotel's service score on booking sites from 8.4 to 8.9 in one year.”
• Weak: “Night shift.” Strong: “Was solely responsible at night for a 180 room hotel, including night audit, cashing up and fire rounds.”
• Weak: “Switchboard.” Strong: “Answered 80 to 100 calls a day, and created an overview of who handles what, which cut the number of transferred calls.”
• Weak: “Meeting rooms.” Strong: “Managed bookings for 12 meeting rooms and catering for 250 employees, and introduced a digital system that ended double bookings.”

Skills, systems and courses worth including

In reception, systems and languages matter a lot, because you need to get started quickly and serve every guest. Give the names of the systems and the level of your languages:

• Property management systems (PMS) and booking channels by name, for example Opera, Mews or Visbook.
• Office tools: Outlook, Teams, Excel and Word, switchboard software and visitor registration.
• Card terminals, cashing up and invoicing.
• Languages with level, for example “fluent English, good spoken German”.
• Courses in customer service, first aid and fire safety, and the knowledge test on the Alcohol Act if you have it.
• Local knowledge for hotel guests: restaurants, transport and sights.

No experience, or many years in reception

If you have not worked in a reception before, highlight service experience from elsewhere: a shop, a cafe, customer service or volunteering. Languages, studies in tourism or business and a willingness to work evenings and nights are also worth a lot. State when you can work. Our guides to a customer service CV, a waiter CV and a CV for recent graduates have more examples you can use.

If you have many years of experience, use the space for your responsibilities: shift supervisor, training new staff, rotas, introducing new systems, responsibility for groups and conferences or contact with corporate clients. If you are aiming for front office manager or office manager, show figures for upselling, guest satisfaction and how many people you have led. Cut older jobs to one line, and keep the CV to one or two pages.

Common mistakes in a receptionist CV

In a job where you are the face of the business, the employer notices the details. Check for these before you send your CV:

• Spelling mistakes. They matter more in a job where you write to guests and clients every day.
• Systems are missing, or only listed as “hotel system”.
• Languages with no level.
• Nothing about which shifts you can work.
• The same CV for a hotel and an office, even though they look for different things.
• Long paragraphs instead of short bullet points.

Create your receptionist CV in under a minute with Selja

A hotel wants to hear about check in, upselling and languages, a law firm about the switchboard, structure and discretion. With Selja you paste in the job ad and upload the CV you already have. In under a minute you get a professional, ATS-friendly CV and cover letter tailored to the job, with the words from the ad, such as guest service, bookings or switchboard, where they match what you have done. If the ad is in English, you get your CV and cover letter in English.

Selja never adds experience or skills you do not have. If the ad asks for something your CV does not show, for example experience with Opera, Selja asks you first and only uses what you confirm. It is free to start: check your CV for free and get an honest review of the whole CV, or take a free ATS check against the ad. Get started when you want to create your first application.

The application and the interview

Your application is the first example of how you write to guests and clients, so it should be short, tidy and free of spelling mistakes. Say why you want to work there, what you can contribute and when you can work. See our example of a job application for a template you can build on.

In the interview you are often asked about a difficult guest, how you prioritise when the phone is ringing and the queue is long, and sometimes questions in English. Practise with the interview questions for the role and our guide on how to prepare for a job interview. If you are wondering about pay, the free pay check shows figures from Statistics Norway (SSB).