Receptionist CV example
Reception work is languages, property software and calm under pressure. Your CV has to prove all three with facts, not adjectives.
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- Sector
- Hospitality and tourism
- Template used
- Porto
- ATS level
- ATS verified
- ATS keywords
- 5
Document preview
How the CV looks once laid out
The same example content, laid out in the recommended template: single column, selectable text and no tables or graphics that break automated parsing.
Sample document. Open it in the editor to change template, language and sections without losing the content.
Ryan Castle
Hotel receptionist with 5 years and three languages
ryan.castle@mail.com · 07700 900174 · Leeds · linkedin.com/in/ryan
Professional summary
Receptionist with five years in 4- and 5-star hotels. I handle check-in and check-out across 120 rooms, serve guests in English, Spanish and French, and hold a 9.1 guest satisfaction score. Looking for a property where I can move into front office supervision.
Experience
Receptionist
Employer name · City · 2019 – Present
- Handled check-in and check-out for 120 rooms at a 9.1 guest score
- Increased upgrade and add-on sales at the desk by 24%
- Cut billing errors 30% by reviewing charges daily
Education
Qualification or certificate for the role
Training centre · Year
Skills
Guest service | Opera PMS | Check-in and check-out | Billing | Reservations and overbooking | French and Spanish
Languages
- EnglishNative
01
Professional headline
This is the line that decides whether they keep reading: a specific role and years of experience, never an adjective.
Hotel receptionist with 5 years and three languages
02
Example professional summary
Three or four sentences with your specialism, one figure and your goal. It sits right under the headline.
Receptionist with five years in 4- and 5-star hotels. I handle check-in and check-out across 120 rooms, serve guests in English, Spanish and French, and hold a 9.1 guest satisfaction score. Looking for a property where I can move into front office supervision.
03
Achievements that work in this role
Past-tense verb, what you did, measurable result. Three to five per role, strongest first.
- 01Handled check-in and check-out for 120 rooms at a 9.1 guest score
- 02Increased upgrade and add-on sales at the desk by 24%
- 03Cut billing errors 30% by reviewing charges daily
04
Skills to include
Written as plain text: rating bars are invisible to automated filters.
- Guest service
- Opera PMS
- Check-in and check-out
- Billing
- Reservations and overbooking
- French and Spanish
05
ATS keywords
The terms filters search for in this role. Place them inside your experience, not in a list at the end.
- customer service
- PMS
- check-in
- reservations
- billing
Work them naturally into your experience — these are the terms screening software scans for.
06
Tips for this CV
What separates a CV for this trade from a generic one.
- 01
Name the PMS you use (Opera, Prestige, Guestline) — the ATS searches for it literally.
- 02
Give an honest level for each language and where you actually use it.
- 03
Add figures for rooms or guests handled per day, not just a task list.
07
What a receptionist CV is
Short definition, ready to quote.
A receptionist CV is the one or two page document used to apply for a receptionist role in hospitality and tourism: it brings together the professional headline, the profile summary, experience with measurable results and the competencies the trade expects you to evidence, such as Guest service and Opera PMS. Unlike a generic CV, it is ordered around what the applicant tracking system and the hiring manager look for in a receptionist: the words used in the advert and the numbers of the actual job.
08
Keywords and where to place them
Each term works best in a specific place in the document. Repeating them all at the end scores nothing.
| Keyword | Where to place it |
|---|---|
| customer service | In the professional headline |
| PMS | In the profile summary |
| check-in | Inside an achievement with a figure |
| reservations | In the skills list |
| billing | In training or certifications |
09
How this receptionist CV gets through the filters
What the example above does right, point by point.
- The headline reads «Hotel receptionist with 5 years and three languages»: the job title (receptionist) appears literally in the first line, not as a creative synonym.
- The trade's keywords —customer service, PMS, check-in— sit inside the experience and summary, where the filter reads them in context.
- Every achievement carries its figure. «Handled check-in and check-out for 120 rooms at a 9.1 guest score» is the pattern to copy: volume, timeframe and result.
- Skills such as Guest service, Opera PMS, Check-in and check-out are written as plain text, never as rating bars or stars, which no parser can read.
- The Porto template is single-column and rated ATS verified, so the sections come out in order.
10
What hiring managers look for in a receptionist
The three points that separate two candidates in this trade.
Property management system
The PMS is the technical filter for the job. Name the one you used (Opera, Guestline, Mews, Rezlynx) and the real tasks: check-in and check-out, night close, float reconciliation and no-show handling.
Languages with level and daily use
On reception a language is the tool, not an extra. Give the level per language and where you used it: phone, complaint handling or agency email, which are not the same skill as conversation.
Upselling and booking channels
Reception sells: room upgrades, late check-out, parking. If you have a conversion or extra-revenue-per-stay figure, that is the strongest achievement on the CV. Add the channels you handled (Booking.com, Expedia, direct engine).
11
Common mistakes on a receptionist CV
The ones that repeat in this role, each with its fix.
- 01
Reducing the job to “customer service”
Reception is cash, reservations, incidents and coordination with housekeeping and maintenance at once. Leave that out and the CV reads like an information desk rather than the person holding the shift together.
- 02
Not separating night audit
Night audit is a speciality: financial close, cash reconciliation and building security with one person on site. If you have done nights, name it, because some hotels recruit for that alone.
- 03
Blurring hotels and serviced apartments
The operation differs: keys, cleaning turnarounds, deposits and short-let rules. State the property type and the number of units, or the manager cannot tell what you can run.
- 04
Typos in the CV itself
Someone who writes to guests and agencies all day cannot have errors in their own document. In a role built on written communication, it is the mistake that rejects you before the interview.
12
What a receptionist earns
So you can tell whether an advert is at market rate before applying.
- Usual range
- Typically £23,000-£28,000 a year, with a night allowance on audit shifts
- What moves the figure
- Grade (receptionist, front office supervisor) and London weighting shift the band far more than years served.
- Where the figure comes from
- Ranges observed in UK front office adverts through 2026.
Frequently asked
Questions about a receptionist CV
- What if I come from customer service in another sector?
- Point the headline at reception and use the summary to translate what transfers: complaint handling, cash, diary management and parallel tasks. Then one honest line on PMS training, even if self-taught, because that is the only real gap.
- How many languages do I need?
- English is the base; a second language decides coastal and airport hotels. Give the level and the certificate if you hold one — reception gets tested on a phone call, so never inflate it.
- Does the same CV work for a clinic or office front desk?
- The skeleton does, the focus does not. Hotels reward PMS, upselling and shift cover; clinics and offices reward diary management, confidentiality and switchboard. Change the headline, summary and the order of your achievements.
- Photo or no photo?
- No photo in the UK or Ireland. In Spain a reception CV usually carries one because the role is the face of the property — the Spanish version of this page follows that convention.
More roles in the same sector
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