How to make the most of your first 90 days on the job

Ask better questions, not just more of them.

When you’re new, everyone expects you to learn, but the people who stand out are the ones who connect the dots through their questions. Don’t just ask “how do I do this?” Ask “why is it done this way?” or “what does success look like here?”

In my experience, those kinds of questions do two things. First, they show curiosity without looking clueless. Second, they help you understand the business logic behind your role, not just the tasks. I’ve seen plenty of talented newcomers stall because they mastered the process but never grasped the purpose.

So in your first 90 days, make it your goal to understand how decisions get made, such as the context, the trade-offs, the pressure points. Once you understand that, you stop being a newcomer and start being useful.

New employees should get connected to a mentor as soon as possible. Many companies have dedicated onboarding programs that include an onboarding mentor, but many do not. In the situation where your company does not provide a mentor for you, seek one out using a certain set of criteria to make sure that the individual you find matches what you need. This should include:

1. Years of experience: Find someone who has been at the company for a few years, but not too many. You need someone only slightly removed from where you are so that their perspective about being a new employee at the company is still fresh.

2. Job level and function: Find someone who is at a similar job level to yours within your functional area, or slightly above. New employees quit for a variety of reasons, but a failure to find connections and unclear expectations about the role are among the most common. Finding someone at your job level can help you create a more authentic workplace connection and build a relationship with someone who can help you understand role-specific needs that may be unclear.

3. Join an ERG for new hires: If your company has ERGs, there may be one for new hires. Information about this could be located somewhere in the onboarding documents or employee handbook, and is often overlooked by new employees overwhelmed with everything else. However, should one exist, join it, as it will help with #1 and #2 on this list.

One of the best things someone early in their career can do in their first 90 days is to intentionally build context before contribution.

It’s tempting to jump straight into proving yourself, delivering fast, showing initiative, being “productive.” But the employees who truly accelerate early on are the ones who take time to deeply understand how things work and why they work that way. That means asking thoughtful questions, mapping out decision flows, and observing how people communicate and prioritize. A specific tip I always recommend is this:

Schedule short, curiosity-driven one-on-ones across teams.

Not just with your manager, but with peers in design, operations, marketing, anyone whose work intersects with yours. Ask questions like, “What does success look like for your team?” or “What’s something you wish new hires understood sooner?”

These conversations build both context and trust, two things that compound faster than any technical skill. By day 90, you’re not just contributing tasks, you’re making informed, connected decisions. And that’s what turns a good start into lasting momentum.

Find an opportunity to go spend a day or, if possible, a week in the field (on-site, in customer meetings, on the production floor) to best understand what your company makes and sells. If your company is a B2B service business, go spend time with those delivering the service to the client. Start the day with them as they would and end the day with them as a team. Complete whatever tasks they give you and take notes on what, why, and how they do the work.

If your company is a product business, you can spend time on the production floor or with the tech teams to understand what they make and how. And in the event you are unable to (or not allowed to) travel to be where the action is, find out who you can learn from and set up a virtual call to download everything you wish to know about their work.

With this one effort, not only will you learn about this specific business, you will get an appreciation for how complex product and service delivery is and what it takes to get things done. It will also give you ideas for where you may want to apply yourself going forward, be it in this job or the next one.

The first 90 days at a new job are about learning and not proving you’re an expert at everything. My advice to newcomers in the job market is to use this time to master how things work before trying to change them. Observe workflows, ask thoughtful questions, and document what success looks like in your team.

Treat these first few months as a learning (and more importantly, listening) period, and you’ll show employers that you’re dedicated to establishing yourself in the role and can adapt quickly to new processes.

The first three months in a new role are often framed as a probation period, a time to prove your worth and secure a quick win. While performance is important, this perspective overlooks the period’s most unique opportunity. For this brief window, you are an outsider on the inside. You have a license to be curious, to observe, and to ask foundational questions without the burden of established assumptions. This isn’t a time for proving, but for learning—not just about your specific tasks, but about the human ecosystem in which those tasks exist.

My one piece of advice is to focus on mapping the informal organization. Every company has a formal org chart, but the real work happens through an invisible network of influence, trust, and institutional knowledge. Your primary goal should be to quietly identify the nodes in this network. Who is the person your manager asks for a second opinion, regardless of their title? Who is the quiet engineer in the corner that everyone consults before a major decision? Who is the administrative professional who truly understands the team’s history and operational rhythm? Understanding this map is not about navigating office politics; it’s about learning how to contribute effectively within the system that actually functions.

I once mentored a young analyst who was struggling to get a critical dataset from a different department. Her formal requests, sent to the team’s director as dictated by the org chart, went unanswered. Instead of escalating, she started observing. She noticed that when others on her team needed something from that group, they didn’t email the director; they walked over to a quiet veteran employee named Sarah, who held no senior title but had been there for fifteen years. The analyst approached Sarah, not with a demand, but with a question about her work and the context behind the data. Sarah not only provided the file but also explained its hidden complexities, saving her weeks of work. Ultimately, your value isn’t just in what you produce, but in your understanding of how and why the work gets done.

Take those first 90 days as a learning experience. You’re new, so you’re not going to have everything down just yet. So, be a sponge during that time. Ask all of the questions you have, observe how your coworkers approach their responsibilities, get to know your colleagues, etc. You can really show your leaders how much you desire to learn and grow, which will reflect positively on you and help set you up for success down the line.

Spend your first 30 days learning and observing. Always carry a notebook with you and jot down everything, starting from the process, the people, and the results. Ask questions. Never hesitate to ask someone to demonstrate the task twice if that helps you to understand it fully. Within 60 days, the majority of what you have learned should already be put into practice. Now, you have gained some experience through repetition, so start making your contributions without needing someone’s instruction. Take the initiative and volunteer for small tasks. By 90 days, it should be your aim to perform tasks without asking for help and deliver the same quality of work. You should not be under the constant oversight of a supervisor or have your work double-checked by someone. Nevertheless, remain inquisitive – try to figure out the solutions to your problems before seeking help. Doing this will demonstrate that you have critical thinking skills and are capable of handling your position.

In your first 90 days at a new job, the most powerful way to stand out is by consistently showing up on time, prepared, and ready to work. Reliability builds trust faster than anything else. When your team and manager know they can count on you, you become someone they want to train, promote, and keep around. It is a simple habit that speaks louder than any words and sets the foundation for long-term success.

One of the most effective ways for an employee early in their career to make the most of their first 90 days is to master the art of structured observation. Rather than rushing to prove yourself by producing output immediately, focus on understanding how things truly work—the systems, culture, and unwritten rules that guide decision-making. The first three months are your best opportunity to see everything with fresh eyes, and that perspective is something you can never fully regain later.

Start by keeping a simple “learning log.” Each day, note one process you observed, one question you asked, and one improvement idea you noticed. This habit helps you absorb the company’s workflows quickly while showing initiative and curiosity. Then, by the end of each week, summarize key takeaways and share a few thoughtful questions with your manager or mentor. It’s a subtle way to demonstrate engagement and analytical thinking without overstepping.

This approach does two things: it builds credibility and helps you identify where your skills can make the biggest impact. Managers notice when new hires connect dots instead of just checking boxes. By day 90, your understanding of how the team operates will be deep enough that when you start suggesting improvements or taking on bigger projects, your ideas carry real weight.

The first 90 days aren’t about speed—they’re about alignment. The employees who rise fastest are the ones who learn how to think in the same rhythm as their team before they start trying to change it. Observe intentionally, ask smart questions, and translate those insights into small, visible wins. That balance of humility and initiative sets the tone for long-term success.

The best thing you can do in the first 90 days on the job is to be intensely curious, then share at least one concrete improvement idea with your manager based on what you’ve learned. To do so, ask a lot of questions. Ask about the team, background, tools, processes, and more. Listen, observe, and note down what you’ve learned. At the end of that 90-day period, share at least one practical idea with your manager on how you can contribute to the team beyond the expected scope of responsibilities or how the way things are done can be improved. Even without previous experience, your fresh perspective is your edge. That fresh perspective, paired with curiosity, can help you add value to the company and set you up for long-term success.

The first 90 days of any new job are about curiosity and connection. My biggest tip for anyone early in their career is to treat that time as an active learning sprint: ask questions, take notes, and learn not just what people do, but why they do it that way. At Reclaim247, we encourage new hires to schedule short “coffee chats” across departments. It’s amazing how much faster people find their rhythm when they understand how their work fits into the bigger picture.

The goal isn’t to impress everyone in the first few weeks; it’s to absorb the culture, observe patterns, and start adding value in small but visible ways. Listen first, contribute thoughtfully, and be open to feedback. The people who do that don’t just integrate well. They grow faster, earn trust sooner, and often end up shaping the culture themselves.

As a tech professional who has worked in several software engineering roles during and after college, I’ve learned that the best way to make the most of your first 90 days is to take ownership of something and deliver real results. The benefits of doing this include greater recognition from your manager and opportunities for higher pay. Look for an internal tool whose owner has left or a neglected part of the codebase that needs attention. During my first internship, I failed to take ownership of anything and didn’t deliver any meaningful results, which led to no return offer. But in my next role, I found an important but unmaintained part of the website and handled all the bugs and feature requests for it. That focus led to more responsibility, a contracting opportunity with higher pay, and eventually a full-time return offer. In short, success in a new tech job often comes down to finding one area you can own and helping it thrive.

When new team members join HYPD Sports, we ask them to pick one complete workflow and own it entirely—maybe it’s our sustainable fabric sourcing, the design-to-production cycle, or the customer experience journey from first click to delivery. This focused approach consistently outperforms scattered learning. Team members who master one complete process show 73% higher productivity scores by their sixth month than colleagues who divide attention across multiple areas. One designer spent her first three months shadowing every step from initial sketch to finished garment. That deep dive paid off—she later redesigned our sampling process and cut turnaround time by 41%. She understood the nuances that others missed because she’d lived the entire journey. Deep knowledge in one area builds genuine confidence and creates a foundation that naturally expands across your entire role.

I find the first ninety days to be an extraordinary period for an employee to become thoroughly engaged with an organization, especially if it is a developing e-commerce and manufacturing business. Any employee who enters into a new organization should initially recognize all of the inefficiencies that are inherent to the present state of the organizational workflow. As I always advise new staff, the greatest value for them during the first ninety days will be to understand the present state of the organizational workflow versus attempting to propose major changes to the workflow on day one. The objective of the new employee is not to display his or her ability to rapidly create innovative solutions, but rather to obtain a thorough working knowledge of how the organization currently operates in twelve weeks.

My best piece of advice is to document the ten slowest processes you encounter and then immediately ask three long-time employees of the organization why those processes have developed in their current forms. There is no reason to simply take the first explanation provided to you; question the underlying assumptions of each response. I began my employment at Patio Productions while we were still only a drop-shipper, and for many of the first months of my time at the organization, I spent considerable time creating detailed maps of the supply chain delay issues that resulted in a 14.85 percent decrease in customer service inquiries once I was able to surface the information. Documenting the slowest recurring processes in an organization and then asking multiple employees why they occur in the present form creates a graphic illustration of the organization’s inertia that is much more valuable than any generalized orientation training, and also identifies the true process bottlenecks that will require the organization’s future focus and demonstrates a practical analytical thinking process. You demonstrate your ability to speak the organization’s language by identifying areas in which the organization has difficulty.

My single best tip for new team members is to create your own “User Manual” for how your team actually works.

Most new hires go into soak-it-all-up mode, passively absorbing information. But a much smarter approach is to be like an anthropologist, actively observing how things really get done.

During your first 90 days, make it your mission to decode the unwritten rules. Keep a notebook, and after every important meeting or interaction, jot down what you notice about communication styles, who really holds influence, how decisions happen, and what values the team truly lives by.

Are Slack messages for quick questions, or is email the norm? Who do people turn to for the “real” answers behind the org chart? Is decision-making a group consensus or done in hushed hallway chats? Do they value speed or perfection?

Then, at the end of your first three months, book a quick check-in with your manager and say something like, “I’ve been putting together a User Manual for myself on how the team works best, and I’d love to run a few observations by you to see if I’m on track.”

This simple step shows you’re not just learning your role; you’re learning the system. It demonstrates strategic thinking, builds trust, and sets you up for success faster than most new hires.

Don’t just settle for learning how things are done; take the extra step to ask about the reasons behind them. Questions like “Why do we use this process?” or “What’s the goal behind this approach?” give you more context and help you see how your work fits into the bigger picture. This kind of curiosity gives you a deeper understanding of the company’s values and priorities, and you’re more likely to notice where things could be improved or done differently. It also shows your team that you’re engaged and thinking ahead, not just following instructions. When you understand the purpose behind your tasks, it’s easier to make better decisions and contribute in a way that stands out, even early on.

Think of your first ninety days like compound interest. Small moves grow faster than you expect, and people remember them.

One thing I always tell younger teammates: Find a tiny pain inside the team and ease it. Maybe a report feels clunky. Maybe a handoff creates confusion. Maybe two teams speak past each other. Spend a little time watching how the work flows, then fix one small piece with care.

It feels simple, yet the impact is real. It shows heart, ownership, and a calm sense of responsibility. Leaders pay attention to the person who makes life a little easier for everyone. That one win builds trust, and trust becomes the engine for everything that follows.

Pick one person to shadow every week and debrief afterward.

Find a colleague whose work you admire—maybe a senior on your team, a cross-functional partner, or someone whose role you’ll interact with often. Spend half an hour each week watching how they tackle meetings, prioritize tasks, and make decisions. Afterward, jot down three things you observed: a habit, a shortcut, or a mindset that helped them succeed. Then, try applying one of those insights to your own work before the next week.

Why it works: In the first 90 days you’re still learning the lay of the land, and direct observation gives you a shortcut to the unwritten rules and effective practices that aren’t in any handbook. By actively reflecting and experimenting, you turn passive observation into concrete skill-building, demonstrate curiosity to your manager, and start building a network of allies who notice you’re eager to learn. This single habit can accelerate your ramp-up, boost confidence, and set the tone for a proactive, growth-focused tenure.

One of the best ways to make the most of your first 90 days is to create your own personal playbook. Write everything down. Every process, every instruction, every login, every passing comment that helps you understand how things work. Then organize it all into a reference guide you can pull up anytime.

When someone forgets how to do something, you’ll already have the answer. This simple habit shows initiative, attention to detail, and a genuine drive to make the team stronger. It’s how you stop being the new hire and start becoming the person everyone relies on.

While not all employers provide a specific 30/60/90-day plan, it’s critical that the new hire have a transparent conversation with their manager about what success looks like within the first 3 months. The employee should document EVERYTHING and follow up in 1:1s to ensure they are on track to meet and/or exceed the goals. I also suggest proactively reaching out to individuals across teams to build relationships and understand how to best work together cohesively. Through the documentation, the new hire should also create a “brag folder” where they compile “kudos” and recognition from others to then share with their manager how their performance has positively impacted projects, teams, and their goals.

An employee can actually make the most out of their first 90 days by looking at each and every task not just as an assignment, but as an SEO case study. Most people are focused on basic training or how to meet their colleagues, but few think about the data. During those first 3 months, record in writing each and every single process you learn to reflect on yourself as a detailed step-by-step guide. Capture the time it took, the tools used, and any measurable outcome. For example, if you are processing 15 client inquiries, calculate the average resolution time, which may be 4.25 minutes. After 60 days, try to optimize that process and document the new and hopefully lower time.

Treating your work this way means that you are not just performing tasks; you are collecting proprietary performance metrics. This type of documentation gives you the ability to show management quantifiable evidence of your value, as well as your immediate, positive impact on efficiency, with clear data points rather than just saying “I worked hard.” It exhibits a systematic, optimizing way of thinking that is very valuable in any business.

It’s Ben Mizes, Co-Founder of Clever Offers. We pair people with great real estate agents and help them save money. In my experience building a startup and hiring new talent, I’ve found one thing really stands out: new employees who act like they’re doing user research during their first three months.

Instead of trying to impress everyone, focus on understanding things. Talk to people in different departments. Find out what bothers them and what they think should be fixed. Then, look for trends and suggest small, quick fixes. The best new hires don’t just do what’s asked of them—they see problems that others miss.