Landing your first job is one thing. Actually thriving in it is another.

Bloomberg asked Sean Twersky, Steno's Senior Vice President of Operations, among other career experts and executives, for his advice on what separates new hires who hit the ground running from those who struggle to find their footing.

Sean's perspective centers on a counterintuitive idea. He believes the pressure to prove yourself fast is a trap. New hires are given more grace than they realize, and the smarter play is to use that window to absorb everything around you.

"There's this fallacy, 'I've got to come in and prove value fast,'” he says. “But people give you a lot of grace. They don't expect you to know everything. This is your opportunity to truly be a sponge."

Part of being a sponge is becoming a fast learner, not just in your current role, but as a career-long habit. Sean points to how quickly the landscape shifts: a decade ago, the conventional wisdom was to learn to code. Today, AI handles much of that.

"No one knows what's coming,” he says. “No one knows what the future is. The biggest thing that you can do is be useful—and to do that, you need to be able to pick up and learn something fast."

That same long-game thinking applies to relationships. According to Sean, his most valuable professional connections have come from colleagues just one level above him who had recently been in his shoes and could flag the potholes ahead. And nearly every job he's landed has come through someone who put in a good word. His takeaway is to start building those relationships on day one. "It's like interest,” he explains. “It just compounds over time, and your first job is when you have the most time in front of you."

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