One Tenth of a Second: How Small Differences Have a Big Impact

The average 40-yard dash time for a college running back is 4.6 seconds.? The average time for an NFL running back is 4.5 seconds.? That means the difference between having a multi-million-dollar professional football career and not making it to the pros comes down to one tenth of a second.? The lesson is that very small differences can make an enormous difference in life.? While we cannot control our God-given gifts like running speed, the factor most directly within our control is effort.

I run a mentorship group at my company, and we recently were discussing career plans.? I had everyone reverse engineer their target job 10 years from now, and then create a series of steps to get there.? Careers often have a “big break” that sets things in motion.? The subject came up about my career and my first big break.

I was an undergrad student at Arizona State University in a dual degree program to simultaneously get a bachelor of science in marketing and a bachelor of science in finance.? I was looking for an internship for my last summer prior to my graduation.? I had applied for dozens of internships, but one stood out as my first choice.? The local phone company, US West, was hiring for a competitive intelligence intern.? This was the late 90s when the Internet was in its early stages and phone companies were the primary delivery mechanism.? The industry appealed to me, and the job paid more than 2X everything else I had applied for.? Not surprisingly there was considerable competition.

I secured an interview and while I thought I did fine, I didn’t knock it out of the park.? I asked the US West HR manager about next steps, and she said that they had not defined a timeline and I was free to follow up with her.? This was the hidden opportunity.? I put a reminder in my calendar to make a polite phone call to the US West HR manager every week.? 2 months went by and every week I made my call.? Finally, they decided to bring back 2 candidates for the final interview.? The HR manager said she had to bring me in because “she was sick of hearing from me,” which she told me in a joking manner.? I got the job, which was my first big break.

That relentless follow-up became my one tenth of a second differentiator.?

My second big break came after graduation.? I was looking for my first real job and going through the interview process with what seemed like hundreds of companies.? Again, one job stood out.? There was company called In-Stat, which did market analysis, strategy, and consulting.? It was a smaller version of the more widely known Gartner Group, and it was founded by several ex-Gartner Group employees.? The job requirements were at least 5 years of direct industry experience and an MBA.? I had neither.

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This was the late 1990s, and email and other forms of electronic resume submission were not yet in place.? Most job applications were done via fax.? Unbeknownst to me, In-Stat had just moved to a new office and their fax line installation had been delayed.? The application process involved sending a physical resume and cover letter by mail.? I actually printed a resume, wrote a cover letter, stuck them in an envelope with a stamp and mailed it.? Even in the 1990s this seemed archaic.?

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I got the interview and landed the job because my experience at US West was exactly what they were looking for.? I was the only person in that role at the company under the age of 30.? I found out later that they had received almost no applications due to the hassle involved in physically mailing them.

Stuffing an envelope became my one tenth of a second differentiator.?

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The lesson I tell people is that you never know when a small amount of extra effort may create a life changing opportunity.? Always put in that extra effort.