Career exploration and entrepreneurship
What is tested
Career exploration and entrepreneurship: knowing yourself, finding reliable career information, and understanding what makes a small business work.
Career exploration
Start with self-assessment: interests, abilities, values, personality and preferred working conditions. Then gather information from reliable sources - career guides, teachers, workers, professional bodies, further education institutions. Consider subject combinations and entry requirements, and the realities of the local and national labour market. A career is a long-term path, not just a first job.
Entrepreneurship
An entrepreneur spots an opportunity and organises resources to meet a need profitably. Useful traits: initiative, creativity, resilience, responsibility, numeracy and customer care. Key steps:
- Identify a problem or need in the market.
- Conduct market research - who will buy, at what price, against what competition.
- Prepare a simple business plan: product, customers, costs, price, expected profit, risks.
- Raise or save capital.
- Keep accurate records of income, expenses and stock.
- Comply with licences, taxes and health rules.
- Reinvest profit and adapt to feedback.
Worked example
A learner wants to sell chickens. Reasoning: before buying, they survey neighbours for demand and prices, calculate feed and transport costs, set a price above total cost, keep a simple cash book, and plan a reserve for disease losses. This turns a hobby into a business.
Traps
- Assuming a hobby is automatically a profitable business.
- Ignoring hidden costs such as transport, packaging and losses.
- Pricing below cost to attract customers.
- Treating entrepreneurship as only about money, not ethics and customer care.
- Relying on one source of career information.