In 2009 I left pharmaceutical sales and became a recruiter at NBCUniversal. On paper that’s a hard left turn. Different industry, different title, different scorecard.
It didn’t feel like a plan at the time. Looking back, it’s one of the most logical moves I ever made. I just couldn’t see why yet.
At Sepracor I called on physicians. You get a few minutes, sometimes less, and the whole call turns on how you handle the moment they push back. There was no place to practice that moment. You practiced in front of the physician, which is an expensive way to learn.
Then I moved to the other side of the table. As a recruiter at NBCUniversal and HBO, I watched candidates walk into the same kind of moment: a few minutes, a pointed question, and a lot riding on the answer. Some strong people never got past it. Not because they weren’t qualified, but because they had researched what to say and never practiced saying it.
Same conversation. I’d just switched chairs.
A new title is not a new direction
Here’s what I wish someone had told me earlier. A change in title doesn’t mean you changed direction. It usually means you found a new angle on the thing you were already paying attention to.
That kind of path is far more common than it feels from the inside. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has tracked the same group of Americans, born between 1957 and 1964, for decades. On average they held 11.9 jobs between the ages of 18 and 50. Most of those moves happened early, but they didn’t stop at 30.
So if your résumé has a few turns in it, you’re not the exception. You’re most people.
What carries over
The title doesn’t carry over. What carries over is the thing you keep noticing.
For me it was conversations: who gets to prepare for them, and who walks in cold. That thread ran from physicians’ offices to NBCUniversal, HBO, Sony Pictures and Quibi, and it’s the reason I build what I build now. ReflectivAI gives reps an AI physician to practice with before the real call. CareerPaver does the same for interviews.
I didn’t plan that arc in 2009. I couldn’t have. It only made sense once I’d walked it.
If you’re mid-turn right now
My suggestion is simple. Don’t ask whether the new job matches the old title. Ask what you kept noticing in the old job, and whether the new one lets you keep working on it. That’s usually the thread, even when nobody else can see it yet.
What’s the thing you keep noticing, no matter which job you’re in?