When Career Failure Becomes Your Greatest Teacher: A Veteran's Journey Through Rejection

How 100% job rejection after college taught me that career failure

often redirects us toward our true calling.

I had a 100% failure rate in landing a job after college. You’d think earning a degree would open doors to a great career—and honestly, it should. I studied agriculture and served as a reserve soldier, but after completing my master’s degree in Agriculture, I sent out hundreds of job applications in the industry—sales, chemicals, agricultural machinery, and more. Most of them went unanswered. The few that did respond were rejections. I never even made it to an interview.

Looking back, my cover letters were probably awful. I was a terrible writer, and in 1990, we didn’t have today’s technology to clean up our mistakes. On top of that, I had no connections—just figuring things out on my own, as I describe in A Soldier Against All Odds.

Maybe it was for the best that I never got hired. The government job that eventually took me in fired me, and so did a low-level private job near Fingerville, SC. Fortunately, the Army called me back to active duty. I never mentioned my history of being fired—some things are better left unsaid. To make matters worse, I even got a bad evaluation in the reserves for an “inappropriate” relationship with a stunning woman. At that point, things were looking pretty bad on all fronts.

Jason Pike

Veteran, Bestselling Author & Inspiring Speaker

jasonpike.org