Career Thesis Test
Test which part of an opportunity genuinely motivates you
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 93%
The Career Thesis Test turns an ambiguous career choice into a practical experiment. First, identify the variables entangled in your current role, such as industry, function, employer, or work environment. Then seek a temporary assignment, internship, project, or secondment that changes one important variable while preserving the others. Compare not only performance but also curiosity, energy, and which assignments attract your attention. Sarah Kirshbaum Levy used a Goldman Sachs summer role to separate her interest in media from her interest in dealmaking. The goal is not to demand certainty from one experience; it is to replace abstract speculation with stronger evidence and make the next career commitment on the basis of observed fit.
Origin
Sarah Kirshbaum Levy developed this test while deciding whether her early enthusiasm came from media or from doing deals. A summer at Goldman Sachs isolated the dealmaking variable and led her back to media.
Core principles
- 01Treat career assumptions as hypotheses
- 02Separate the role from the industry
- 03Use real experience rather than speculation
- 04Notice which work sustains your interest
- 05Let evidence guide the next move
How to run it
- 1
Define the competing hypotheses
State precisely what you may love about the current opportunity. Separate the industry, function, company, status, and working environment instead of treating them as one package.
Pro tip Write each possibility as a falsifiable statement, such as “I prefer dealmaking regardless of industry.”
Watch out Do not frame the test as a vague choice between two job titles.
- 2
Design a controlled career experiment
Find a temporary role or project that changes the uncertain variable while retaining enough common ground for comparison.
Pro tip Internships, rotations, freelance projects, and secondments can provide evidence without forcing an irreversible move.
Watch out A purely informational interview cannot reproduce the daily experience of doing the work.
- 3
Track engagement across assignments
Observe which projects hold your attention, where you willingly invest extra effort, and what you continue thinking about afterward.
Pro tip Record observations during the experiment rather than reconstructing them at its end.
Watch out Do not confuse a prestigious employer or supportive manager with enthusiasm for the underlying work.
- 4
Choose from the evidence
Compare the experiment with the original role and identify which hypothesis best explains your sustained engagement. Use that conclusion to guide the next full-time commitment.
Pro tip Treat the result as better evidence, not a permanent identity.
Watch out Do not ignore consistent evidence simply because it conflicts with your prior career narrative.
In the wild
Levy was doing strategic and transaction work at Disney and did not know whether media or deals drove her interest. She spent a summer at Goldman Sachs, where assignments varied by sector. She enjoyed the experience but found the media project more compelling than the others, giving her a cleaner signal about the industry she wanted to pursue.
→ She returned to media full time and built a long career at Nickelodeon and Viacom.
A healthcare analyst who enjoys improving internal tools takes a short product rotation at a software company. She likes product discovery but misses working on healthcare problems, revealing that the function travels well while the domain remains important.
→ She pursues product roles within healthcare technology rather than abandoning the sector.
Common mistakes
Testing too many variables at once
Changing industry, function, location, and seniority simultaneously makes it impossible to know what produced the result.
Measuring prestige instead of energy
A famous employer can make an experiment feel successful even when the underlying work is a poor fit.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for people deciding between two plausible career paths with overlapping features.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal when a short experiment cannot realistically represent the work or its conditions.
From the transcript
“And my summer pivot was really I was doing deals, and I was doing media, and so the question for me was is it media…”
“And I tested that thesis by spending the summer at Goldman”
“but really loved the media project I was working on more than the other projects.”
From the episode
Sarah Kirshbaum Levy on the Value of Marketing