I follow an informal rule of "never be the first person in a conversation to bring up work/career" (or weather, or family/kids).

If you play the rule like a game, it's kind of fun.

After starting with a personal trainer, I made it 10 sessions (10 hours) of small talk before he finally asked me something that led to a conversation about work.

It's a lot more challenging (but way more rewarding I find) to initiate conversation topics relevant to the context you're meeting the person in, and waiting for the other person to bring up the boilerplate conversation topics if it's important to them.