Forgot, I should answer the second part of your question. I didn't really know what I wanted to do in college, majored econ then switched to poli sci thinking more law school focused. Attorneys I spoke to said bad idea (great recession). Read an article senior year and was inspired by Glenn Stearns' story and decided to go RE, but had a tough road to climb w/o finance related degree and too late to switch back to econ. Broker friend of my dad was at the house one night so asked him what I should do to get into the field, he told me to get my license and call him. Got my license and called him, but he seemed almost shocked I actually took his advice. Called him again and asked if I could assist for him commission basis (was living w/ parents still) he said he 'didn't do assistants' but was able to get me an interview at the large regional brokerage he was at. The manager said I should brush up on finance background and mentioned CCIM. Did CCIM and he put my resume out to the teams. Kept following up but nothing came of it. Needed to do something so started looking for jobs. Came across internship for a political campaign and recognized the name as someone who owned a retail center in the city. Poli sci degree helped me get the internship, but told the campaign manager I wasn't really into politics but trying to get my foot into CRE. He thought that was cool and brought me on. Two weeks to voting day and campaign manager said okay he's going to let him know about me. The guy thought it was awesome and instead of just owning some family RE turned out to be the old manager for top global CRE firm. Gave me a mock interview and told me why my answers were shit and what I should say instead. He gave me a nice reference and put my name out to every broker that he personally got into the business. Got a call for an interview, went through about 5 interviews over about 6 months and finally got the job. Was told later that if I had said I wanted pay instead of hit the ground running I wouldn't have got the job.
TL;DR I got lucky. Networking works. Also, this is info for brokerage side of business not necessarily principal side.