The Job Search is a lot like….baseball?

Ah…failure! Nothing like reading about failure during your day! The job search is a LOT like baseball. If you may or may not be familiar with baseball, it is certainly a sport of failure. A .333 batting average has been and always will be considered a very strong and successful batting average over the course of a season and phenomenal average over the span of an entire career. That means for about every 10 times a hitter comes to the plate, they are getting a hit slightly over 3 times. On the flip side, this means the other 7 times or, so they are recording an out or in other words, failing.

However, a hitter could come to the plate, bottom of the 9th (last inning of a baseball game), two outs, not having a single hit all night, their team down a single run and with a teammate on first base BLAST a homerun to win the game in a “walk off” (no chance for the other team to respond) fashion, or in other words, SUCCEED. A lot of people will say this is what makes baseball beautiful.

I’m not going to say that failing in the job search is glamorous, but a lot of professional baseball players would probably say being in a slump, some players this season have gone over 20 straight at bats without recording a single hit, is frustrating, confusing, you begin to question yourself, worthiness, abilities, the list goes on. BUT, sometimes, it only takes one. That’s what I tell my students all the time and in some ways the job search has that advantage over baseball. Once you get that job offer, the search part of your game is done. You no longer have to worry about striking out with companies, just go perform at the one that gave you an opportunity. Baseball players on the other hand could break that 0/22 slump, be 1/23 and then go on to get out at their next 22 at bats again.

 Keep going. Keep pushing. You are more than capable of having success and it only takes one company, or even one person at a company to see that. Hey, chances are, you can only work one full time job anyway. If you’ve applied to 100 jobs and got rejected from 99 and offered from 1, congratulations! That is still a win and really is the end goal in this whole process. Not fun, not glamorous, and getting rejected certainly is not the best feeling in the world, but it makes the ONE all that much sweeter.

You never know when your breakthrough is going to come. Do what good baseball players do: Positive self-talk, make adjustments to the strategy and approach when needed, and lean on teammates and coaches for support (think Career Services advisors, professors, other campus resources).

Babe Ruth, arguably the greatest baseball player of all time had 8,399 career at bats and “only” had a hit in 2,873 of them. In almost any other area of life a 34% “success rate” would be laughed at, but not in baseball and NOT in the job search. (Thanks Baseball Reference for the stats)

Go out and GET your ONE!

By Dustin Miller
Dustin Miller Associate Director, Engineering