Fast Start - Your First 60 Days

It's barely two weeks into her new job at the advertising giant Foote Cone & Belding, and Molly Buchholz's nerves are fried. Buchholz, a 29-year-old account executive, has just had a dispute with the company's media director, her first with a Foote Cone colleague. Despite the media director's objections, she has advised her client, Lucent Technologies Inc., to turn down a flashy sponsorship deal with a National Hockey League team. She tried to disagree without being disagreeable, but she fears that the colleague is less than amused.

"There's been some grumbling," she says. "But if I don't express my opinion around here, I'll just be a puppet."

Though she believes she made the right decision, Buchholz frets over the fallout: Did she come off as pushy? Did she break an unwritten rule? Did she insult someone whose support she'll need down the road? Buchholz was a star performer at her previous gig, with Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide, but she feels tentative at her new one. She doesn't yet speak Foote Cone's language. Learning it has been exhausting.

"I spend a lot of time worrying about how I act and react in different situations," she says. "I feel like I'm under a microscope."

So does just about everyone who starts a new job these days. (And these days, people are starting new jobs all of the time.) Not so long ago, a fresh hire could expect a blissful honeymoon period - a little time just for settling in. But now that rapid technological change and bare-fisted competition for market share have quickened the pace of business, the honeymoon is over.

"Companies used to have what they loosely called a 90-day probation period," says Linda Seale, head of the Seale Group, an executive coaching firm whose roster of clients includes such A-list companies as Avon Products, BMG Entertainment, and American Express. "Now they can't spare more than 60 days. At some companies, you're lucky to get even that."

Many organizations are swapping the welcome mat for the revolving door. It's not uncommon for people to be hired and fired within a matter of weeks. The rules are changing: To succeed today, you must fit in, you must perform, and you must do it all on deadline.

The biggest mistake that a new hire can make is to lose a sense of urgency, says Seale, whose background includes a stint as head of human resources for the notoriously high-speed MTV Networks. "Time slides by, and before you know it, you're stuck with whatever impression you may have haphazardly left for others to see," she says.

Seale helped us devise an agenda for your first 60 days in a new work situation. Use it to launch your next job - or to reboot the one you've already got - and keep your career on a fast track.

First 14 days: Get to know four new people.

When you show up for your first day, leave at home this fallacy: Your success depends on your work. "The combination of your performance and your personality determines how you're viewed," says Seale. "Probably 95% of firings are the result of failing to fit into a company's culture. If people don't know you, they can't trust you."

To "fit in," you've got to get out. That means leaving your comfy cubicle and spending time with people who can tell you about the hidden rules of success in your new workplace. Seale suggests that you come up with a strategy before you step into the "meet" market: Seek out the regulars (your teammates, the guy in purchasing whom you'll be calling often), the deal-makers (project leaders, people in-the-know), and the potential mentors. Then start eating. Put aside two days each week to have lunch with those people.

During those lunches, don't slather on the charm. You're there to listen. The point is to find out how your new workplace really works: How do people interact with the boss? Who should you recruit for the projects that you'll be leading? What are the cultural no-nos?

"Just establish an initial connection, so that you can build a relationship," says Seale. "Trust and information will follow naturally."

When Eileen Burke, 37, started as a senior vice president at Fleet Financial Group in early 1997, she made networking her top priority. A veteran of both Banque Paribas and Chemical Bank, she had learned that the most valuable currency in banking is whom you know.

During her first month at Fleet's Media and Communications Group in New York City, Burke called her counterparts in Boston to schedule a series of informal meetings. She returned from her first trip with critical advice from a fellow senior vice president. He told her that the group executive vice president, a busy guy who oversees a department of 40 people, responds to a spoken request more readily when it is accompanied by a concise memo.

"That tip took some of the guesswork out of figuring out how best to communicate with my boss," Burke says. "He's running a large group and just gets barraged with information. The memos help him manage all of it."

Intracompany networking should continue beyond your first two weeks. The goal is to establish a routine and never to fall out of it. Seale recalls the fate of a talented but socially inept employee at Saatchi & Saatchi, where Seale was serving as executive vice president of HR. "It was around the 90-day mark for a wave of new hires, and I was doing informal performance reviews with other senior executives. We drew a blank when this guy's name came up. He hadn't connected with anyone on his team or spent any time building relationships with people. None of us knew him. He had no credibility, and he was fired at the end of his first year."