Sometimes I imagine my mind like a house. Not like a "mind palace".. if you know someone who talks about their "mind palace", just know they are desperately sad and need a hug.
No, the house I imagine is an old two up two down terraced fixer upper. Some rooms are clean and functional, others have mould and damp. If I ever had the spare time and money, I'd do up each room in turn, but for now, I'm just happy I've got a working kitchen.
There are a few books that I've read that have basically demolished a hitherto useless chunk of my brain, and replaced it whole sale with a functioning new skill and ability.
This puts me one step closer to staying in the workforce, and one step further from being institutionalised. Which is good.
Deep Work was one of them. But the one I want to talk about is The First 90 Days by Michael D.Wartkins. It is my blueprint for starting new roles and I want to share it with you.
Michael Watkins' work on transitions makes a clear point: the goal of onboarding is to reach the breakeven point quickly, the moment when you contribute more value than you consume.
For us super-sonic talent warriors, that means moving from learning to filling roles and shaping hiring strategy as fast as the context allows.
Here is how to structure the first 90 days.
Diagnose the situation before you act
Not every recruiting role is the same problem. Watkins separates situations into distinct types, and the type determines your strategy. Map yours early.
A startup desk means you are building process from nothing. No ATS hygiene, no scorecards, no intake standard. Your value comes from installing structure.
A turnaround desk means hiring is broken. Time-to-fill is high, hiring managers have lost trust, candidates drop out late. Your value comes from fast, visible fixes and rebuilding credibility.
A realignment desk looks healthy on the surface but is heading for trouble. Pipelines are full but quality is slipping, or the team is filling roles that no longer match where the business is going. Your value comes from naming the problem others are avoiding.
A sustaining-success desk means you inherited a high-performing function. The risk is breaking what works. Your value comes from understanding why it works before you touch anything.
Misreading the situation is the most common early mistake. A turnaround recruiter who acts like a sustaining-success recruiter will move too slowly. A sustaining-success recruiter who acts like a turnaround recruiter will damage a functioning team.
Secure early wins that hiring managers can see
Credibility in recruiting is built on delivery, not process documents. Pick one or two visible wins in the first 30 to 45 days. A hard-to-fill role closed. A stalled search restarted and moved to offer. A hiring manager who was skeptical of the function getting a strong shortlist faster than expected.
Avoid the trap of spending the first month rebuilding the careers page or rewriting templates. Those matter, but they are invisible to the stakeholders judging you. Internal infrastructure work should run underneath a visible delivery win, not instead of it.
Negotiate expectations with your manager
Have the direct conversation early. Recruiting leaders often assume a new hire understands the priorities. They rarely state them clearly. Establish four things in your first weeks:
What does success look like at 90 days, in specific terms (roles closed, pipelines built, a process fixed)?
Which open roles are genuinely urgent versus which are aspirational?
What is the real state of the relationships with key hiring managers, including the ones who are difficult?
What resources do you actually have: sourcing tools, agency budget, headcount support?
Do not assume the job you were sold is the job you have. Verify it.
Read the stakeholder map
Recruiting runs on relationships you do not control. Hiring managers, the people team, finance for headcount approval, and in some cases external partners. Identify early who holds decision power over offers, who blocks process, and who will advocate for you. The hiring manager who responds fastest is not always the one who matters most.
Spend the first weeks in listening mode with these people. Ask how hiring has worked for them, what has frustrated them, and what a good recruiting partner looks like to them. This is intake at the relationship level, and it pays off across every search you run afterward.
Build your learning plan deliberately
Watkins frames the early period as a learning sprint, not a performance sprint. For a recruiter that means three areas:
Technical learning. The ATS, the existing pipelines, the comp bands, the approval workflows, the data on what has and has not worked.
Cultural learning. How hiring decisions actually get made here, how candidates are treated, what the unwritten rules are about who gets hired and why.
Political learning. Where the real influence sits, which hiring managers carry weight, where past recruiters lost credibility.
Set a structured cadence for this. Treat it like a sourcing project with a defined endpoint, not open-ended observation.
A note for those preparing for promotion
Promotion into a lead or head-of role is also a transition, and the same logic applies. The most common failure is staying in the previous role while holding the new title. A recruiter promoted to lead keeps recruiting full-desk and never builds the team. A TA leader promoted to head keeps managing searches and never engages at the strategy level.
The shift is from doing the work to setting the standard for the work, from filling roles to deciding which roles get filled and how. Diagnose this transition the same way you would a new job. Secure an early win at the new altitude, not the old one.
The breakeven point is the goal
Everything above serves one outcome: reaching the point where you contribute more than you take. For a recruiter, breakeven is usually visible. It is the first quality hire delivered, the first hiring manager who starts coming to you instead of waiting, the first search where you set the strategy rather than receiving the order. Aim for it deliberately. Structure the first 90 days around getting there, and the role establishes itself.
Luke Update
Currently on the train to London. the person next to me is trying desperately to contextualise what I'm writing with pictures of otters which I'm quite enjoying.
I'll be hanging our with the incredible Joe Atkinson, Co-Founder of Prompt Mates and breaking bread with a few TA leaders in this swelterting heat.
Well... that's issue seventy six! If you have any questions about it, or any feedback on this issue of The Data Driven Recruiter, grab me on LinkedIn for a chat.
I'll see you next week!