I often think about the question - “Is a succesful approach to something objectively the best in absolute terms or is it just the contrarian take in the moment?“.
If you’re applying for a job with 100 applicants all of who have perfected the current meta(Most Effective Tactic Available), and you take a wildly different approach of sitting down and saying “look, I know this is what you want - here is how I can do it”, etc etc, the interviewer is going to wake up from their daze of “here are my references, my biggest weakness is, I think I would be great for this role because..” applicants.
I often wonder if it’s a naivety that someone thinks they have an absolute grasp on how they can win every time because of some static system they’ve perfected. Instead, it’s probably the case that they probably zigged at the right time when other’s zagged.
While I typed this out I was reminded of a famous quote - “Buy When There’s Blood In The Streets” by Nathan Rothschild, promoting the idea of contrarian investing.
Being a contrerian isn’t gaurenteed to be a way to develop a strong signal though.