How screwed am I? Shall I bother with employment or Start my own business

Long story short I've received two driving convictions two years ago 1. speeding 2. altered doc with intent to deceive. For these charges I was fined. I'm guessing no one will employ me, I don't know if they are spent or unspent. But for the sectors I planned to go into e.g. consulting tech finance, I'm sure I'll have to declare. Currently, I'm a self employed Day trader, and run some online business. So what do you think guys, should i try and scale and what I'm doing, supplementing myself with odd jobs here and there or use my skills and apply for a grad job? I studied Economics and mathematics btw

No employer is going to be bothered by a speeding conviction, but "altered doc with intent to deceive" is going to be a huge red flag for any job where trust is involved - like finance.

Also, those convinctions won't be spent yet if you only gained them two years ago.

If your self-employment is going OK, then you might be best to stick with that until your convinction for deception is spent.

Amazingly (and depressingly), it doesn't actually work like most people think it does.

Under Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, depending on exactly what kind of job you're looking for you may not have to declare your convictions.

The mad thing is that your points will last longer than your documents conviction. The points will be gone in 3 years, but on your licence for 4. Your s.173 offence, although it is a relatively serious one - you presumably had it dealt with at Magistrates and got a fine. That usually means its considered spent in 6 months or a year (depending on how old you were at the time), and won't show up on a Basic DBS.

You have to be very careful exactly what you do, though. Apply for your own DBS certs and you can see exactly what will show up - but the type of job you are applying for will have a huge impact on what is and isn't disclosable. Another thing is that some DBS checks are carried out as part of particular professional memberships, rather than as a condition of employment itself - for example, locksmiths have to have DBS as part of being in the professional association, but the majority of locksmiths aren't in it.