Tadej Pogacar just won Milan-San Remo a few weeks ago.
The one monument (cycling’s 5 biggest one-day races) they said didn’t suit him. Too much of a sprinter’s race. The Poggio isn’t long enough for his climbing legs. He’d tried before and come up short every time.
So what did he do?
He kept showing up. Kept trying different tactics. Attacked from different points. Tried the long breakaway. Tried suicidal descents to drop everyone. Tried everything.
And this time — the time it finally worked — he crashed during the race.
Crashed. Got back on. Won anyway.
But get this:
He didn’t win by doing the same thing harder. He won by trying something different enough times that he found the one approach that worked for THIS race. The tactics that won him the Tour de France didn’t work at San Remo. He had to adapt. Experiment. Fail publicly. Crash literally.
And then win.
Most job seekers do the opposite.
They send the same resume to 500 jobs. Get rejected. Send it to 500 more. Same resume. Same approach. Same cover letter. Same STARologue answers in every interview.
And when it doesn’t work they don’t change tactics. They just do the same thing harder. More applications. More volume. More of what already isn’t working.
Pogacar didn’t spam Milan-San Remo with the same attack year after year.
He studied it.
Adjusted.
Tried new angles.
Crashed. Got back up.
And eventually found the move that the race couldn’t defend against.
There’s a moment in 10,000 Interviews where I break down what candidates who actually adapt look like vs the ones who just keep repeating the same failing approach. It’s in Chapter 6 — the chapter about a skill I call “threading” that most candidates have never heard of and career coaches have never taught.
Because career coaches have never won anything.