Episode 23: The First 90 Days on the Job

Nothing is more critical than the first 90 days on the job.  This small window of time sets the tone for the entire rest of your experience in that position, and with that organization.  So what should we know about this ever-important period?

Join Jimmy as he shares some wisdom and recommendations on what to do during your first 90 days.  You'll learn some ins and outs of navigating a new job, a new company, and how to conduct yourself as the new kid in town.

References:
Probationary Periods for New Employees (indeed.com)

Mastering the art of building connections in your first 90 days at a new job - SheCanCode

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Transcript

Whaddaya hear, whaddya say?  Welcome to episode 23 of the Career Consigliere podcast: your no frills, no BS forum for navigating the corporate job scene.  Jimmy with you, once again for what we hope to be a highly informative and engaging half an hour, or so!  Today, we’re going to focus on how you should spend the first 90 days of a new job.  This is a very critical time as somebody brand new.  You fought your way through the interview process, negotiated tooth and nail for a few extra bucks, got your Ph.D. in health and wellness benefits, and became an expert on the mutual funds inside your 401-K account.  Now, all the preliminary is out of the way, and you’re in the show, so it’s time to make it count.  We’ll go through the best possible way to handle your first 90 days, and what to be aware of as you navigate the waters of a brand new job, brand new company, and brand new chapter in the corporate chronicles.  Gonna be an informative one today podcast land, so letttsss get it!

Let’s start by clearing the air on an age-old myth.  Now calling this a myth isn’t completely accurate, because it does exist on an official basis in certain places, but it’s another one of those age-old concepts that, thanks to telephone games that spread like wildfire, often gets warped blown out of proportion.  Yes, we’re talking about probationary periods.  An article from Indeed defines a new hire probationary period as a predetermined timeframe that starts on the employee’s date of hire and concludes at the end of period, which is traditionally 90 days in most companies.  This is basically a trial period when the newcomer onboards and gets ramped up in the job.  Since they’re brand new, the employer keeps a close eye during this period to determine whether the person is a good fit.  And keep this one in your back pocket for next time they have trivia at the bar:  Montana is actually the only US state where probationary periods are required.  In the other states, employers can determine the length of their probationary period, but aren’t obligated to have one.  Hope that helps you win a free six-pack to bring home!  

From my own experience, across all the jobs I’ve had, I’ve never once been told “officially” that I was on probation of any kind.  And since only one state actually has legislation on the books for this, my understanding is that the probationary period is more of an “unwritten” rule than anything else.  Think about it:  if someone’s a total screw-up, usually their flaws and bad habits will show up well before 90 days is up.  If a person is chronically late, doesn’t get along well with others, lazy, a big complainer, any proclivity towards behaviors like that, 90 days is more than enough rope for that kind of person to hang themselves.  But on the other hand, you won't necessarily know if someone's a superstar stud during the first 90 days either.  The first 90 days is when you usually go through training, when you’re learning the ropes, getting to know people, so usually you’re not going to pull of any Nobel-prize worthy accomplishments during your first three months.  So with that, from my experience, what I’ve seen and heard, if a company DOES enforce any kind of probationary period, it’s usually meant as a strategy to weed out the bad apples.  And that’s great news for the average corporatopian, because all you have to do is be cool with people and do a halfway decent job, and chances are you’ll clear the “probationary” threshold no problem, if there even is one.  

But meeting the minimums to avoid getting canned before the 90-day mark isn’t the point of this episode:  that’s not the attitude you should take towards your career.  What I’m here to do is give you some actionable suggestions and strategies for how to approach these first 90 days, which are CRITICAL to the kind of experience you’re going to have at whatever company it is.  So let’s get into it.

I found a really simple and straightforward article from She Can Code.io, and this one gives some really good suggestions that’ll guide this conversation pretty nicely.  What you’ll notice right away is that every single one of these suggestions has something in common:  they’re all based on building connections with your colleagues.  Anybody can master the ERP, learn how to run the reports, and figure out which elevator gets you to the 35th floor the fastest.  But where a LOT of people go wrong is forgetting that it’s the connections you have with your colleagues that make or break your experience in a place.  I’ll go through some of the suggestions, and lace it with my own wise-ass, heavily jaded commentary as we go down the list.  

So first, the article suggests being approachable and open.  You would think it’s common sense:  things like smiling, making eye contact, shaking peoples’ hands, being respectful during conversations, all the things that normal human beings with even marginal self-awareness do.  Yet you’d be AMAZED at the number of people who have a real chip on their shoulder during their early days with the company.  I remember one time, I was giving a new hire training on the company’s CRM tool.  The office we were in was out in Chicago, and it was a small suite in one of those professional complexes:  Most of the other tenants were doctors, lawyers, a bunch of tiny little operations in there, so it was REALLY easy to crash the network with a bunch of people all doing high bandwidth stuff at the same time.  So that happened:  part of the training involved downloading sample reports, and that’s what did us in.  The entire network went down not only for us, but for all the neighboring tenants in that part of the building.  

So put on-the-spot and highly uncomfortable, my co-trainer and I were scrambling to find a fix.  It did kind of make us look like jackasses, not gonna lie, and that’s when one of the trainees piped up and said “heh, looks like we’ve got the blind leading the blind over here.”  Now how do you think I felt about that guy?  And how did he look to everyone else there?  He was with the company a grand total of three days and he’s already making insulting comments to seasoned colleagues?  Textbook a-hole.  And you think he had a long, prosperous career with us?  Use your imagination there.  Bottom line, it all starts with being a decent person to the people around you:  being a smug, arrogant prick in a place full of strangers is a real quick way to tank any prospects for yourself.

Next up, and this one here is “low hanging fruit”......I say that tongue-in-cheek since I mocked it back in episode 21 (which you should definitely check out if you want to poke fun at some dumb corporate jargon).  But anyway, seriously, this one is a slam dunk:  the article recommends that we schedule one-on-one meetings with our colleagues.  These are formal meetings that you set up, they appear on the calendar (usually in 30-minute intervals), and they allow you to introduce yourself to people and learn about who they are, what they do, etc.  You won’t get to know their deepest and darkest during these meetings:  for the most part people keep these professional, and sometimes they use it as their own personal soapbox to beat their chest and brag about all they do for the company, show you crazy complicated slides that you’ll be clueless about, so keep an eye out for that.  But these are EXCELLENT opportunities to build connections with your colleagues. 

And, in a lot of cases, your manager or someone else on the team might even set these up for you, which saves you all the uncomfortable work of having to introduce yourself in a meeting invite and potentially get ghosted by an important stranger that you still have to see after.  That’s the big downside to this:  at least 20% of them are going to get rescheduled.  Yes, you’ll have those crazy busy people who block off their calendars simply because they like to keep their screens colorful.  They’re the ones that’ll kick the can down the road 5-6 times, constantly rescheduling these meetings on you.  The kicker is lots of times, even after they ditched you, you’ll find them brownnosing someone important at the coffee machine during the time you were supposed to be meeting.  That’s always wonderful.  But even if this happens, it can be a good thing, because you’ll learn the habits of your colleagues, who’s reliable and trustworthy, and who ISN’T.  Your job during these meetings isn’t to say too much:  you’re there to listen and absorb information.  Definitely ask questions if you have them, but this is the time for you to be humble and take a proactive approach to getting to know more about the company and your job through your colleagues.  And hey, now you have someone to say hello to when you pass them in the hallway!

The next suggestion the article recommends is initiating conversations.  The author tells us not to wait for others to come to us:  take the initiative and strike up conversations with those who you come across:  at the coffee machine, in the cafeteria line, in the elevator lobby, any place where you can have an informal, low-pressure conversation.  Now it’s not going to work every time:  the success you have with this is going to vary WILDLY based on the culture of the company.  I’ve worked places where it’s real laid back and anybody you see will stop and say hello and BS with you for a few minutes.  And then I’ve worked places where it’s the complete opposite.  I remember once back when I worked in the city, I wound up at the coffee machine.  There was a lady there finishing up making her coffee, and I had no choice but to wait for her.  So rather than standing there in deafening silence for the next 90 seconds, I tried making small talk.  I don’t remember what I said, probably some dumb joke about the day of the week or something along those lines, and she looked at me like how DARE I speak to her.  She didn’t even say anything back, I think she actually grunted, to be honest.  Maybe she was actually a neanderthal that escaped from the wax museum, who knows, but these kinds of things will happen.  It can be hard being the new person, but don’t let dumb crap like this discourage you.  Be aware of it and be ready for it, but put yourself out there anyway.  Obviously if a person is really giving off signs that they don’t want to be bothered then you back off, but for better or worse, you’ll be more memorable the more you talk to people.

Next on the docket, newbies on the job are advised to attend social events.  These come in many shapes and sizes:  they range from “hey, let’s grab a quick coffee downstairs”, to “let’s all volunteer at a food drive on Saturday”.  Regardless of what the event is, they all have one thing in common:  they provide a WAY more relaxed setting where you can get to know people on a more personal level.  When you’re working in the corporate world, you’re literally playing a “role”, they call it that for a reason.  It’s almost like acting:  you behave the way that your ROLE dictates, you say the lines that a character like yours is supposed to say.  But when you take that away, when the camera is off, you’re left with a bunch of people together in a room, or at a park, or wherever it happens to be.  And people, by their very nature, are social animals.  Some more than others, but everyone, regardless of who they are, wants to fit in and be accepted by the people they’re around, and these “off the record” gatherings with your colleagues allow you to use the human element to your advantage, and give you a really unique (and rare) opportunity to build connections with people without having to send meeting invites, without having to talk to their secretary first, you get it.

The bottom line here?  Participate!  I remember in every single one of my past jobs, there was always one person with a real stick up their ass.  “Oh, I don’t drink coffee.”  When you invite them to lunch “Oh, I’m doing a low-carb thing this month”.  God forbid you invite them to happy hour “Oh, I only drink wine from the North Fork when I’m with my friends on the second Sunday of the month.”  Real approachable, right?  Real team players they are.  You definitely don’t want to be THAT person:  they just come off as someone who’s antisocial, and someone who isn’t interested in building relationships with people.  But on the other hand, you don’t want to be the reckless party animal of the group either.  Every company ALSO has that one person that gets a little too gassed up at happy hour and starts badmouthing people, saying creepy things to the ladies in the office, or just really starts making a scene and acting like a jackass.  To some degree you can understand:  as corporatopians, we’re not allowed to express our emotions and feelings all day.  We have to “act as if”, we have to play along, many times with crazy, toxic people that we can’t stand.  So you know what?  Most of us ARE probably going to be tempted to get a little loose-lipped after 2-3 beers.  And if you have really close relationships with your colleagues, use your best judgement:  say what you’ve gotta say, but always ask yourself this question:  would you be okay if whatever you’re saying came back to you?  Imagine your boss asking you about it on Monday morning.  Is it something you could defend?  Or would you walk in on Monday morning to a buzzsaw?  Use you best judgement.  

Next, we have joining work-related groups.  Any corporation with even a few hundred people will have some kind of internal forum or committee that focuses on certain projects, interests, activities, or other stuff like that.  I liken it to this:  remember back in school, you were always encouraged to join “extracurricular activities”?  Think of it like this:  the work you do all day, the stuff that’s on your MBO and your bonus is based off of, is your “schoolwork”, the stuff that you get judged on that’s non-negotiable.  But anything else that you do above and beyond that is on a volunteer basis, and those are your extracurriculars.  Lots of employers have mentorship programs, groups that focus on DEI initiatives, and committees that plan birthday parties or monthly pizza days.  Whatever it is:  if there’s something that interests you, you should definitely get involved.  

The reason I encourage this is very similar to attending social events:  it gives you a chance to network and get to know people around the place.  Most of the big jumps and high visibility stuff I worked on in my career wasn’t given to me on merit:  it was because I went out of my way to do things that helped me build connections with the right people.  I remember in one job, I really was interested in training.  So when the person in charge of training happened to be in town one day, I went to go see her, introduce myself, all that fun stuff.  That turned into her inviting me to Chicago to take part in a training that I otherwise wouldn’t have even known about:  she wanted to get my thoughts and input on how the training could be improved, all that good stuff.  And after I did all that, guess what?  A full-time spot opened up on her team and yours truly got it.  Never would have happened had I not taken the initiative to get involved.

Beyond networking, there’s another reason why joining groups and getting involved is good.  There is a political aspect to every organization:  if you join a certain group that supports a certain cause or solves a certain problem, in some sense you’re showing solidarity with the organization and sending a message that you’re willing to give up even MORE of your time because this particular thing is something you believe in.  But, listen closely:  you have to be careful with this.  I’m not the best guy to talk to you about managing politics:  I’m very deliberate, very direct, and I don’t deal well with BS:  never have, never will.  And politics is all about image, and illusion, and generating a narrative around something.  So with that, my advice is definitely to get involved in these groups, but make sure it’s something you believe in, or are interested in.  Don’t do something just because you think it’s going to “look good”:  you won’t be passionate about it, and you’re going to stick out like a sore thumb to everyone else there.  People will associate you with whatever cause or initiative you’re hanging around, so make sure it’s something that you’re okay being associated with.  

Finally, we end with being mindful of company culture. Every company is different:  even companies that are in the same industry, sell the same products, or even share a building, will be starkly different from one another.  And there’s no one company that suits everyone:  what’s known in the literature as “person-organization fit”, is a topic you’ll hear a lot about.  It’s a pretty common sense term that basically refers to the way a company operates will attract and retain certain kinds of people, and not others.  Great example:  Wolf of Wall Street.  FANTASTIC movie:  some of Leo’s best work, no question.  The way it’s portrayed in the movie, what kind of person would be a cultural fit for a place like Stratton-Oakmont?  Someone who’s highly competitive, results-oriented, and ruthless:   I mean, you’d have to be to commit large-scale securities fraud, right?  

A personal story for you about a bad organization fit.  I did a paid internship in my last semester of college.  It was with a company that sold first aid products, and I worked in one of their field sales offices.  Now I’m 21, and all I’ve done my whole life is go to school, and be a straight-A student.  So all I knew how to do was color inside the lines.  Now, all of a sudden, I’m working with career salespeople, some 15-20 year veterans, who made their living off of being “creative”, to put it mildly.  In my 7 short months there, I saw these salespeople telling flat-out lies to customers to get their business.  I saw them submitting “new account” paperwork for customers that didn’t exist to boost their volume (pretty sure that’s embezzlement, but nobody cared).  And there was more than one installation I showed up for, simply following what was on the PO, when the customer realized they’d been duped, and the product that arrived wasn’t “necessarily” what the sales rep said it would be.  

And that’s only scratching the surface:   These salespeople had sailor mouths in the office, they’d get into screaming matches with each other, take personal phone calls right in the office talking about graphic details of wild things they did over the weekend, it was crazytown.  So picture a person like me:  a naive 21-year-old kid who only knew how to do things “the right way”.  Was I any kind of fit for a place like that?  It was an issue the whole time:  they kept dangling this “sales rep in training” position in front of my face saying “you have to prove yourself if you want this job”.....this $40K a year job where you’ll be ripping off small businesses for a living, real great proposition.  They could tell that I wasn’t cut out for it, and I eventually came to that conclusion myself also.  As a young kid I thought at first “oh, this just must be how work is”, but after I got hit with part of a stapler during someone’s temper tantrum, a lightbulb went off and it all kind of clicked.

The point here:  when in Rome, do as the Romans do, but within reason.  And pay close attention to this in your first 90 days:  it might not be real obvious right away, but after 90 days or so, you should have a pretty good idea of the lay of the land.  If the place is real buttoned up and professional, then YOU have to be buttoned up and professional.  If the place is a sewer, then join the rat pack and be dirty, if that’s your jam:  just don’t do anything illegal.  But however it plays out, make sure the place is a good fit for you.  Everybody’s different and thrives in their own way.  There’s no right or wrong when it comes to person-organization fit:  it’s going to completely vary based on YOU.  As a straight-A student, that internship was my first ever big failure.  And it’s not because I was stupid, or because I wasn’t capable:  I wasn’t comfortable, and I didn’t want to GET comfortable, because I knew there’s no way I could do that kind of job and be in those kinds of situations long-term.  

So to wrap things up, HOW should we spend our first 90 days on the job?  Let’s answer that with today’s.......consigliere call to action.  First, be approachable and open.  Not complicated, people.  Basically, just be the kind of person that people would want to be around.  Remember the golden rule you learned in kindergarten?  Treat others the way you’d want to be treated?  A lot of people forget this rule as they go through life, but the good eggs amongst us commit to keeping it part of their daily routine.  

Next, schedule one-on-one meetings with your colleagues.  In a lot of cases, your leader or some other ambassador in the company will actually do this for you, and they should, since you won’t know who anyone is in the beginning.  These are great opportunities to introduce yourself, gain some basic familiarity with your colleagues, and connect on a level half a notch deeper than the regular corporate act.  Keep these meetings professional, but definitely use them to your advantage.  If nothing else, you’ll have more people to say “yo, what’s up?” to and give the reverse head nod when you’re out and about in the office.    

Taking it one step further, we also learned that we should initiate conversations.  It’s kind of a natural extension of being approachable and open. Don’t be all creepy and go out of your way to do it, but if you see somebody at the coffee machine, or in the elevator, or somewhere else where it’s “appropriate” to strike up a conversation, go for it.  Not everybody is going to respond in kind, and definitely back off if you see they’re not down to talk, but regardless, they’ll remember you as somebody that tried to be nice, and usually next time your paths cross they’ll be a little more receptive to you.

We’ve also been advised to attend social events.  Whatever it is:  lunch, happy hour, or a big company-sponsored event, definitely put yourself in the mix.  You’ll get a chance to socialize with people “off camera” so to speak, where they’ll be a lot more relaxed and a little bit closer to their true selves.  You’ll rarely get  100% of somebody at the office, but you’ll get way more at a company picnic than you will in a meeting or at your desk.

Also, make sure you join some groups!  While there’s nothing technically “wrong” with just doing your job and going home, joining “extracurriculars” gives you the opportunity to show that you’re committed to the organization, and to your career, a little bit more than just doing the bare minimum.  Most of these groups often have influential people in them, and those aren’t bad connections to make.  And no, it’s not just because we all want a promotion someday.  Think about it:  if you’re on good terms with somebody higher up the ladder, it’ll make your life at that company easier.  You’ll have a point of contact to help you get things done, and somebody you can go to for support on whatever it is that’s happening.   

And finally, whatever you do or get involved in, just be mindful of company culture.  When in Rome, do as the Romans do.  It’s true:  you can’t 100% be yourself in corporatopia.  It sucks:  but, we as humans are dynamic creatures, and the best thing you can do here is just adapt your habits and personality to fit what’s happening.  If the place is laid back, play up your relaxed side.  If the place is a pressure cooker, then bring your game face.  And guess what:  if after 90 days you don’t like the culture, then you know it might not be the place for you.  Remember, you’re in charge here:  for as much as you’re in the hot seat during the 90-day probation period, the company and the culture and all the other aspects of the place are also in YOUR hotsteat.  So if you’re not feeling it after 90 days, you can adjust your expectations and start building an escape plan, which we’ll talk all about in the future.

Sadly folks, that’s all the time we have for today.  But have no fears, and shed no tears, because I’ll be back with a new episode every week.  As they say in the industry:  no listeners, no show, so do me a favor, and stay loyal!  If you find value in my content, please leave me a nice review, tell all your friends, and don’t forget to like, subscribe, and follow on whatever platform you use to get your podcasts.   Beyond the confines of your headphones, speakers, TV screen, or any other crazy contraption with the ability to stream audio, I also provide one-on-one career assistance, so visit my website at career-consigliere.net to learn more about me, book me for a private consult, join my email list, or explore some of the other career services I offer.  And to all of you out there in podcast land, remember this:  Who’s the boss in your career?  You, nobody else.