Exploring a Career in Entrepreneurship

By Carole Simpson

From age 16 to 60 we are engaged in making career related decisions from planning an education path that will get us to the career we want, to preparing for retirement. Career decisions are most often made based on experience – whether that is limited to observing our parents in their careers or on-the-job experience. Still, young people have the most difficulty with career planning because of their limited exposure to the world of work.

Generation Xer’s (born between 1961 and 1981) believe they will be better off if they take care of themselves—a view that leads many to business ownership. “Twice as many young people would rather own their own businesses than be a top executive of a large company, and four times as many say they would rather own their own business than hold an important position in politics or government,” writes polling expert and The American Enterprise editor Karlyn Bowman. Bowman calls this “a new ethic of self-reliance.” What sets Generation X apart from its elder Baby Boomer generation is “an unapologetic interest in success” says Richard Miniter, Executive Producer ofEnterprising Women, a US national weekly radio program. Generation Xer’s are starting businesses at younger ages and in greater numbers than their predecessors – about three times as high a start-up rate as any other age group according to a 1995 Babson College study.

So how do young people today prepare themselves for a career in entrepreneurship? Robynne Anderson, founder and principal of Issues Ink, a Winnipeg home-based business in communications and public affairs, encourages young people planning their careers to “investigate the possibilities before opting into the conventional workforce.”

Much of that investigation begins at school. According to a survey of almost 2,900 Calgary high school students, one of the things that they care most about is preparing themselves for their future work life.¹The number one type of counselling service these students felt they required was career counselling. US Gallup studies show that seven out of 10 high school students are interested in starting their own business and over 75 percent think it is important that they be taught entrepreneurship in school. Yet, only 27 percent of high school students take an entrepreneurial business course.² Career Digest: Career Development Concepts for Today, produced by Alberta Human Resources and Employment gives teachers five ways to optimize career development in the classroom:

Take the pressure off making the “big decision” by encouraging students to dream and keep their options open.
1. Help students to know themselves through interest inventories, school performance, likes and dislikes and subject competencies.
2. Help students recognize opportunities by linking their competencies in subject areas and various career sectors.
3. Use a sector approach to help students broaden their occupational choices in sectors such as entertainment, health care, environmental, and service, and help them understand that roles within every sector vary from entry level to entrepreneurship.
4. Use a sector approach to look at career pathways to identify developmental progressions from school to work. The notion of career pathways will help students answer the question: “Given my vision of what I want to do and my current skill set, what additional skills and learning will increase my ability to achieve what I want?”

There are other opportunities for young people to explore entrepreneurship as they consider career options. One such opportunity is through a Junior Achievement (JA) program www.ja.org . JA casts a wide net in terms of early education about business and entrepreneurship because their programs start in elementary school and culminate with a high school program called Student Venture, in which students start and operate their own business. Participation in a JA program offers the added benefit of having experienced business people work with the classroom teacher to bring the concepts to life.

Post secondary institutions are stepping up to the plate and offering more choice because students are demanding more courses in entrepreneurship. Mount Royal College in Calgary, AB offers a Bachelor of Applied Business and Entrepreneurship for students who intend to either start their own business or work in a small business. www.mtroyal.ca/schoolofbusiness/smallbus/

The University of Manitoba opened the Asper Center for Entrepreneurship to support young entrepreneurs in the province of Manitoba through a combination of education, contacts with the business community and organizations interested in supporting entrepreneurs, and providing practical experience. http://umanitoba.ca/faculties/management/mainNavset.html

There are a number of useful resources to help young people explore and consider a career as an entrepreneur. A workbook entitled Self-Employment: Is it for me? is offered by Alberta Human Resources and Employment. It is free of charge for Alberta residents and available for a small fee to educational institutions and non-profit organizations.

Even though there are many excellent resources to help young people consider career options, there is a shortfall of information about how to prepare for a career in entrepreneurship. For example, young people are often advised to gain experience in their chosen field by volunteering or job shadowing, but that is particularly difficult to achieve in an entrepreneurial environment. Those people who have parents or relatives who own their own business stand the best chance of achieving this goal.

Mentoring is gaining popularity within many organizations, especially those designed to help youth. Mentoring is a voluntary role performed by someone who has either traveled the path the protégé is contemplating or has experience in the field the protégé is considering. Mentoring focuses on the needs of the protégé but because it is natural that a young person’s career aspirations are often not yet clear, mentoring young people through career exploration presents more of a challenge. For good reason, this is a role that is typically reserved for career counseling professionals. That said, there are a number of career mentoring programs that target specific career sectors, such as the Association of Professional Engineers Geologists and Geophysicists of Alberta, The International Telementor Program, MentorNet, the Small Business Mentoring Program, STEM (Support Through Employment Mentoring) and Canada WorkinfoNET.

The Canadian Youth Business Foundation has launched an online mentoring program called Odyssey designed specifically for aspiring young entrepreneurs. Even so, this is not a career development program but a mentor program for those young people who have already identified entrepreneurship as a career choice.

Check out these points of interest:

Canadian Youth Business Foundation

Home

Human Resources Development Canada & the Department of Canadian Heritage
www.pch.gc.ca/index_e.cfm

Ministry of Opportunity, Innovation and Enterprise
www.ontariocanada.com/ontcan/en/youth/youth/ye_summer-company.jsp

References

^¹Collins, S. (1998) Adolescent Health Related Needs (Doctoral dissertation). Calgary, AB: University of Calgary.

^² www.score.org/stats_young.html   SCORE:  Counsellors to America’s Small Business.  Source:  Seeds of Success, Entrepreneurship and Youth, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation

Carole Simpson is Vice President, Mentor Program Development for the Canadian Youth Business Foundation, in which her principal focus is the development and implementation of mentor programs for young entrepreneurs.  Carole is a program management and training specialist with 18 years experience in program implementation in the non-profit sector. She can be reached at the following coordinates: (403) 261-2923; simpson@cybf.ca; www.cybf.ca