A career is not a ladder

When I was 21 years old, I found myself in Washington D.C. for a day alone. I wandered around, looked at some stuff, met a friend for lunch, and bought a scalped baseball ticket. In the middle of it all, my father told me to meet a colleague of his who ran a recruiting firm. 

It was the middle of July, so Washington D.C. was muggy and hot. I rolled up a yellow plaid collared shirt in my backpack, and when I finally found his office, I put it on over my thin undershirt, asked the doorman for lift up the elevator, and knocked on his office door. 

He answered it with a headset on, clearly on the phone with a client. He gave me a warm, knowing look, and beckoned me to follow him with two fingers. I walked through the hallways of his office, and sat in front of his desk as he finished his call. He was a small man with greying hair, but he spoke with vibrant confidence on the phone. The view out his window was nice, in the financial district of Washington D.C. 

“Mr. Hopper…” he said. “It’s great to see you.” He launched into the conversation as if we already knew each other, as if we already had plenty of fascinating things to talk about. He asked what I had been up to that summer, what I was studying in college, and what I had been doing for work. Notably, he didn’t ask me what I wanted to do for work after I graduated. 

This was a relief, because I had no clue what I wanted to do with my communication degree. I didn’t really have a clue what I could do. Then, he told me something that stuck with me since. He said a career path is not like a ladder. It’s like a funnel. You start off with something super broad, something you’re probably interested in, that can teach you a lot. You work hard. You see if you like it. Then, he explained, little by little, you go deeper into the funnel. It gets thinner, and more focused on what you really love as you discover more of what that is. 

He said that skills and experiences lead you down the funnel. You do something for a little while that feels like you, but then, at some point, it stops feeling like you. You take what you learned, you bring it to your next role, and you continue your journey down the funnel, this time, a little closer to what your true calling is. 

I was wide-eyed as he explained all this to me. There wasn’t much time for me to talk, and I didn’t mind. I soaked it all up.

This has been my mindset ever since. Start with something you know you like. Learn as much as you can. Eventually, you’ll see a way to refine it, and get closer to what you really love.