Your Results aren’t your Destination

GCSE or A-level results not what you hoped for? Your Career Voyage may have changed course, but it’s only just beginning.

A-level results last week. GCSE results this week.

For some young people, there will be celebrations. For others, the carefully worked-out Plan A might suddenly have disappeared.

The university you wanted. The sixth form or college you expected to go to. The course you thought you would take. Maybe even the career you thought you had mapped out.

If that’s you, or you’re a parent, grandparent or friend of someone whose results haven’t gone to plan, this is for you.

You have not failed at your future.

Your coordinates have changed.

That’s all.

My A-level results didn’t go to plan either

I know something about this because I messed up my own A-levels.

I didn’t get into the university I had hoped for and, at the time, it felt enormous. I thought I knew where I was going and suddenly I wasn’t going there.

So I went somewhere else.

And that somewhere else led to people, opportunities and experiences I couldn’t possibly have known about when I was 18.

I went into AI in Paris, then an FMCG marketing career, moved into headhunting, started businesses and spent years helping other people find roles and navigate their careers.

Now, in my 60s, I’m setting off on another new adventure myself.

Could I have predicted any of that from my A-level results?

Not a chance.

None of it happened because I had my career beautifully mapped out at 16 or 18.

Quite the opposite.

Your career is a random set of experiments, a voyage, not a straight line

We still talk about careers as though they follow a nice neat route.

School. Qualifications. University or training. Job. Career. Success.

Real careers rarely work like that.

They’re much more likely to be a fairly random series of experiments, conversations, opportunities, side quests, wrong turns and happenstance.

If you’re 16 or 18 today, you could have 50 or even 60 years of working life ahead of you.

You have time.

You’ll probably take jobs you never expected to take.

You’ll meet people you don’t even know exist today.

You’ll have conversations that change your direction.

You’ll discover things you’re brilliant at that no exam has ever measured.

You’ll change your mind.

And you may well end up doing jobs that don’t even exist yet.

You’ll probably make some wrong choices too.

That’s useful.

Sometimes discovering where you don’t belong helps you work out what you need from the place where you do.

You can’t Google what somewhere feels like

We have more information available to us than ever before.

You can Google a university, college, apprenticeship, employer or career.

You can watch videos about it.

You can read reviews.

You can ask AI almost anything about it.

But there’s one really important question you can’t Google:

How will I feel when I’m there?

Will I like the people?

Will I enjoy the environment?

Will I be interested in the work?

Can I be myself there?

Will this feel like the right place for me?

Sometimes you simply have to go and find out.

That’s why I think careers are a bit like getting on a paddleboard.

You don’t need to know exactly where you’re going before you get on the water.

You get on.

You wobble.

You learn.

You adjust your direction.

And gradually, you get better at navigating.

Courage, confidence, clarity

We often expect young people to have clarity first.

What do you want to do?

What career do you want?

Where are you going?

What’s your plan?

I’m increasingly convinced we’ve got the order wrong.

For me, it’s:

Courage → Confidence → Clarity

Take a big deep breath and do something.

That takes courage.

Doing something gives you experience.

Experience builds confidence.

And that confidence gradually gives you more clarity about what you might want to do next.

Not clarity about the next 50 years.

Just your next step.

Take a Saturday job, a side quest or a job for now

Your next step doesn’t have to be the start of your forever career.

Take the Saturday job.

Take a summer job.

Volunteer.

Try a short project.

Explore an apprenticeship.

Take a job for now.

Take the side quest.

It’s an experiment.

Every experience gives you information about yourself.

What am I good at?

What do I enjoy?

What gives me energy?

What sort of people do I like working with?

What kind of environment brings out the best in me?

What do I absolutely detest?

That last one matters too.

Finding out what you don’t want can help you course-correct much earlier.

And parents, please don’t be a job snob about the Saturday job.

Working in a café, pub, shop, salon, warehouse or leisure centre can teach someone an enormous amount about customers, teamwork, responsibility, communication, problem-solving and confidence. Transferable skills (I call them powerskills) which are more necessary than ever.

It might also introduce them to somebody who changes the direction of their career completely.

Careers happen through people and conversations as much as they happen through carefully constructed plans.

Your strengths matter more than you may realise

If your GCSE or A-level results haven’t gone to plan, don’t only concentrate on the grades.

Get curious about your strengths.

What comes naturally to you?

What gives you energy?

What do people ask you for help with?

What do other people think you’re brilliant at?

Some of our greatest strengths can sit in our blind spot because they come so naturally to us that we assume everyone can do them.

They can’t.

So ask people who know you:

“What do you think I’m brilliant at?”

Listen carefully to the answers.

You may discover things about yourself that no exam result could ever tell you.

What should you do if your GCSE or A-level results aren’t what you hoped for?

First, take a breath.

Then start having conversations.

Talk to your school, college or university. Explore the alternatives available to you. Look at different courses, apprenticeships, jobs and routes you may not have considered before.

Get curious rather than assuming there is only one right answer.

Try things.

Talk to people doing jobs that interest you.

Take opportunities that allow you to experience different workplaces.

Learn more about your strengths.

And remember that the next thing you do doesn’t have to determine the rest of your life.

It can simply be the next experiment.

Your results are not your future

An exam result tells you how you performed in particular subjects at a particular point in your life.

It matters.

But it cannot possibly tell you everything you’re capable of becoming.

It can’t measure all your strengths.

It can’t predict the people you’ll meet.

It can’t predict the opportunities that will appear.

It can’t predict the mistakes you’ll make and what you’ll learn from them.

It can’t predict how technology will change the world of work.

And it certainly can’t map the next 50 or 60 years of your life.

So if your GCSE or A-level results haven’t taken you where you expected, take a breath and look up.

You haven’t missed the boat.

Your results aren’t your destination.

They’ve simply changed the coordinates of your Career Voyage.

Get on the water.

Wobble.

Experiment.

Be curious.

Have conversations.

Take the job for now.

Take the side quest.

Course-correct when you need to.

You don’t need the whole map.

You just need to take the next step.

Bon voyage. ⛵️

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