Career Pathfinder Programme
A structured career-discovery programme for South African high-school learners. You explore, you answer honestly, and a qualified career counsellor reads every result before anything is sent home.
Takes about 45–60 minutes · Best on a laptop · Parent or guardian consent required
The process
Nothing here guesses for you. Every step adds a piece, and a real person checks the whole picture before your family sees it.
Work through the career explorer and rank the careers that pull at you. Most learners find three or four they had never heard of — that is the point.
Personality, interests, abilities, what you value in work, and how you see yourself right now. There are no right answers and no pass mark. Answering honestly is the only thing that makes it useful.
A qualified career counsellor reviews your profile against your two career choices, writes a personal interpretation, and signs it off. No report is ever generated automatically.
Your parent or guardian receives a PDF feedback report covering your personality type, your strengths, your two career choices and what they require, plus anything the counsellor thinks deserves attention.
The job-shadowing assignment puts you next to someone already doing the work. You spend time in a real workplace and write up what you found — including if you hated it. That is a useful result too.
Read this before you choose subjects
Mathematical Literacy is not accepted in place of Mathematics for most engineering, science, health-science, accounting and finance qualifications. If you take Mathematical Literacy, a large number of university and college programmes close to you — and many of them cannot be reopened later without repeating a subject or writing an equivalency.
This is the single most expensive subject decision you will make at school, and it is usually made in Grade 9 for Grade 10. If any career on your shortlist might need Mathematics, speak to your counsellor before you sign your subject form. Do not rely on what a friend, a website, or a chatbot tells you — requirements change every year and differ by institution.
What you walk away with
Personality type, top interests, abilities and work values, your two career choices with real qualification pathways, and a counsellor’s written interpretation of what it all means for you.
Awarded once your counsellor has reviewed and signed off your assessment. It goes out together with your feedback report.
Awarded after you have completed a workplace placement and submitted your written reflection. Worth attaching to a bursary or college application.
Assignment
Submit your reflection and your second certificate follows once your counsellor confirms it. You will need the date, who you shadowed, and what you learned — including anything that surprised or disappointed you.
Ready when you are
A parent or guardian books the assessment and receives an access code by email. The learner enters that code on the first screen. Set aside a quiet hour and finish it in one sitting.
All inclusive: the assessment, a counsellor-written report, job shadowing, a follow-up meeting and certificates. Progress is not saved, so finish it in one sitting.
For parents & guardians
Your name and email are captured at the start of the assessment and your consent is recorded before any answers are stored. The report is emailed to you, not to your child.
Responses and reports are restricted to the assigned career counsellor and the programme administrator. They are not shared with the school, sold, or used for marketing.
You may ask to see what we hold about your child, ask for it to be corrected, or ask for it to be deleted. Write to us using the contact details below and we will confirm in writing.
Questions
No, and you should be suspicious of anything that claims it can. The assessment narrows the field and shows you where your interests, abilities and values point. The decision stays yours, made with your counsellor and your family.
Most learners take 45 to 60 minutes. Progress is not saved, so start it when you have a clear hour and a stable connection. A laptop is much easier than a phone.
There is not. The questionnaire measures preference, not ability, and answering the way you think sounds impressive produces a report about someone who is not you.
After a counsellor has reviewed it. Because every report is read and interpreted by a person before it is released, this is not instant — allow a few working days.
It is the part learners consistently say changed their mind. The second certificate depends on it, and a day in a real workplace tells you things no questionnaire can.
If the counsellor notices something that needs attention — academic, emotional or practical — it is written into the report for you and your parent to discuss, and the counsellor will say what they suggest doing next.
Speak to your counsellor. Retaking it a few weeks apart rarely changes much, but if your circumstances or subjects have genuinely changed it can be worth revisiting.