Explore jobs with UCAS Progress

It may seem years and years away before you start your career but soon you’ll be able to make choices about qualifications that could impact what route you take to where you eventually want to be.

Deciding what you need to do now can be tough – should you do A levels, Highers, BTEC diplomas or an apprenticeship? – there are literally hundreds of options.

To help you narrow it down we’ve created our explore jobs section. We’ve catalogued over 100 different jobs you could do, explaining what each job involves and how you can get into that career. Ever wondered how to become a hospital doctor, beekeeper or dancer? We’ve got the answers and links to more information.

We’ve listed the essential and desirable qualifications for all the jobs featured – we’ve also highlighted if there are different pathways into the career of your choice.

There are a couple of different ways to start your research:

• if you know what you want to do, you can search for that job and go straight to the profile
• you can filter roles by job family – so if you know you want to work in engineering and manufacturing you can look at the only jobs relevant to that job family
• if you’re completely stuck for what to do, take the Buzz quiz – it takes just a few minutes and suggests different jobs and job families you may be interested in based on your personality

Soon you’ll also be able to filter jobs by the skills needed to do the job – like written communication, or related subjects – like maths and English.

Remember, there’s lots of different things you can do. For most jobs there are lots of different ways you can study or train!

Apprenticeship experiences

This week is National Apprenticeship Week which celebrates apprenticeships and the positive impact they have on individuals, businesses and the economy. There are over 100,000 employers who offer apprenticeships and so far, we’ve received over 8,500 applications through UCAS Progress. This figure is increasing every year!

To get a better understanding of the journey you go through on an apprenticeship, we asked Amanda Dorsett from Resource Productions and Sadie Hawkins from IBM to share their experiences.

Amanda Dorsett from Resource Productions 

“I started my journey as an 18 year old girl who had just completed her A levels but didn’t know what she wanted to do. At the time, I had two part-time jobs and had been studying IT and media. I found out about apprenticeships through school and looked further into them. I applied for tonnes of apprenticeships in IT as I thought this was the career path I wanted to take."  Read on...




Sadie Hawkins from IBM 

“Hello! My name's Sadie Hawkins and I'm an IBMer*.

A 21 year old apprentice on a mission – a mission to promote apprenticeships (and alternative career paths) and prove that apprentices really can 'get in and go far'!

With thanks to work experience back in 2010, I gained fantastic insight into IBM’s clients, culture, innovation and technology. From there, I was hooked!" Read on...



Are you thinking about an apprenticeship? Check out our website for all the facts you need to get started. You can search for apprenticeship opportunities using our search tool.

As part of National Apprenticeship Week, we’ll be sharing lots of facts and information on the UCAS Progress Facebook and Twitter pages, so keep your eyes peeled!