Career Success

How to Write a 30-60-90 Day Plan: A Step by Step Guide

A 30/60/90 day plan (you can also call it a 90-day plan) is an important part of an achievement. Learn how to write a 30/60/90 day plan here.

By Michele Lando
August 07, 2023

Photo by Polina Zimmerman

Why should we prepare 30-60-90-day plans at every new job—and maybe even at our existing jobs?

It’s really common to feel overwhelmed and sometimes totally lost in a new environment.

This spans from social settings to professional settings alike. When starting a new job, settling in and learning the ropes in your new role can take a little while.

This is where the 30-60-90-day plan comes in. This document will help set the tone for your new role and will help outline and benchmark where you are, where you want to be, and how you can get there. It can also serve as a way to show your new employer that while you’re still learning, you're able to be productive and set goals for yourself.

In addition to helping you in a new role, a 30-60-90 plan can also be beneficial to create when you’re in the midst of the application process. Doing so can help interviewers visualize how you might fit into the role you’re applying for.

What Is a 30-60-90-Day Plan?

A 30-60-90 day plan is a document that outlines target milestones for employees to hit in the first 30, 60, and 90 days of employment. This document can be created by either the new employee or the manager in order to break down goals into attainable increments.

This helps create accountability, gives the employee an outline of expectations, and helps give insight into what new employees should be doing and focusing on during that first stretch of employment.

It may be beneficial for the hiring manager to give a preliminary plan to set expectations and ask the employee to fill it in further and flesh it out after a discussion about goals and employment structure.

This allows both parties to be involved in the plan to set goals and to gain a shared sense of success when it comes to outlined milestones.

When to Create a 30-60-90 Day Plan

So, when should you prepare a 30-60-90 day plan? Should you prepare it when you get a job, before you interview, or after your first week? Here's what to do.

During the Interview Process

Having the plan written out before interviews can be beneficial for interviewers. This way, a hiring manager or decision maker can assess how various candidates could accomplish outlined milestones.

On the flip side, if you’re part of the interview process for a lucrative role, it might be worth outlining a 30-60-90 plan to give to the interviewer.

This shows your ambition, motivation, and desire to take on the role and resolve problems from the get-go.

When Starting a New Job

If new hires are writing their own plan, this plan should be created when the employee is first starting out at the job. If the hiring manager is creating the plan to deliver to new employees, it should be created prior to the employee starting the role.

The goal is to maximize employee output in the first days of being hired. These are the days that can be overwhelming and confusing in many cases.

A plan in place helps set up both the employee and the manager for success. This kind of preparation gives both parties a roadmap to refer to as they navigate the first few months working together.

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How to Set Goals for Yourself

Before setting out to plan, your first step is to familiarize yourself with your goals. To solidify your goals and make them SMART.

SMART is an acronym that can help you break down the toughest goals—and achieve them with hard work and real intention.

The SMART Goal Acronym:

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Time-Bound

When setting personal goals, it’s a good idea to follow the SMART guidelines to make sure you avoid getting discouraged and actually reach them. We all know how easy it is to feel defeated, lose our motivation, and give up on ourselves.

Using this acronym and creating realistic goals within your 30-60-90 day plan will help set you up for success in a new role.

What Every 30-60-90-Day Plan Needs

To create a successful plan, you'll need to ensure that you have the most crucial elements in place. These include:

Company Mission
30-Day Milestones and Goals
60-Day Milestones and Goals
90-Day Milestones and Goals
Resources Needed
Evaluation Rubric

Company Mission

When writing a 30-60-90 day plan, it’s important to acknowledge the company mission because it needs to align with its mission and goals.

Prioritizing the company mission within your plan can tie everything to the larger organizational goal. It can also help the employee (whether you or someone else) understand their role in the company.

30-Day Milestones and Goals (First Month)

Here, you’ll list out goals or milestones you want to achieve within the first 30 days on the job. If you’re writing the plan for someone else, note what you want them to achieve. Laying out clear expectations is beneficial for everyone.

You may want to break down your goals into learning goals and performance goals.

Limit the goals to three to five to keep things clear. For each goal, write down a key metric that will be used to measure whether the goal is achieved or not.

When writing goals for this first month, consider the onboarding process, how you’ll meet new team members, and the workload as you start a new job. Keep in mind that there will be a learning curve.

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Consider making regular check-ins with your manager and new colleagues part of the plan. Building relationships will likely be a big part of this first month.

60-Day Milestones and Goals (Second Month)

Just like you did above, you’ll write down goals, but these will be for the second month. As you (or the employee) become more familiar with the role and the company, the goals may be more in-depth or more tangible.

There may be sales quotas to meet, etc. There may also be time-bound goals that you’ll want to account for or training that might need to be completed.

90-Day Milestones and Goals (Month Three)

As you get into the goals for the third month of employment, it may be helpful to have a specific focus on your goals to set yourself up for success going forward.

If you’re in a sales role, you may consider your sales strategy and how you will facilitate new sales as you gain confidence in your role at the company.

Will you reach out to key stakeholders, conduct networking within your territory, or focus on fostering collaboration within your team? Whatever goals you set, build them in a way that will help you as you move forward in your employment.

Resources

Regardless if you’re writing this plan for yourself or for another employee, resources are a key factor of success here. A 30-60-90 day plan is a guide, so it’s important to include resources to make success attainable.

Key resources that might be helpful:

Contact information for people who can provide useful insight (i.e. HR, manager, counterpart, etc.)
Links to helpful articles on how to use software
Links to the employee handbook or employee guidelines
Computer-led tutorials or educational resources provided by the company
A sample workflow (e.g., an outline of the sales process lifecycle, a workflow for how content gets built, or anything else along those lines)
Key verbiage used when speaking to clients or partners

If you’re building this plan for another employee, think about what resources were helpful when you started. Consider the resources you wish you had when you first embarked on the role.

Evaluation Rubric

A rubric is a type of scoring guide that assesses and articulates specific components and expectations for an assignment. When writing a 30-60-90 day plan, it’s important to evaluate progress and what goals are met.

By creating a rubric, you’ll set clear expectations and provide an outline of how progress will be evaluated.

10 Crucial Tips for Writing a 30-60-90 Day Plan

1. Give Yourself Grace Throughout the Process

Branding Consultant and Coach Eloise Stewart notes the importance of working in a way that best suits your personality.

She explains, “I am a planner, but sometimes the traditional 30-60-90 day plans overwhelm the creative/flexible/visionary side of myself. I do better by picking the due date, event date, launch date, etc., and then working backward. So maybe it's not 30-60-90 days exactly.”

2. Be Realistic

She goes on to note that in a business setting, “Sometimes the visionary or leader will set the timeline or plan but they aren't the one to do the work. So the plan isn't realistic or it only will work in theory.”

When writing a plan like this, it’s important to be realistic with the timelines. If you’re not sure, crowdsource and ask for help! Using information from the greater team will make the plan more realistic and more effective.

3. Communicate

In a new position, verbal communication will come into play almost immediately. While you may feel intimidated speaking up in a new workplace, you'll want to take opportunities to enunciate clearly, ask questions, and state your needs and wants.

By establishing a communicative position from the get-go, you are telling your managers that you are both open to feedback and will not hesitate to interface should any issues arise.

4. Use Resources Available to You

The job description provided for you is a great resource to utilize when writing your 30-60-90 plan.

The job description should outline job responsibilities and may also outline concrete goals for the employee. Use this to your advantage and pull information from your job description to build out your plan with concrete goals and milestones.

If there is a company intranet, or employee website, there will likely be a lot of useful information there as well. This is where you should be able to find the company mission, information about the culture, new initiatives, and even about overarching or long-term company goals.

5. Don’t Be Afraid to Ask Questions

Stewart suggests reaching out to others with more insight or familiarity with timelines. “Creating 30-60-90 day plans doesn't come naturally to all of us, which is okay. Surround yourself with those who can help you, who know it better than you, and who will be the most impacted by the plan,” she says.

As discussed above, asking for insight can help you create a more effective plan for everyone involved and can reduce the risk of incorrect or unrealistic timelines.

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6. Evaluate Team Goals

By identifying the purpose behind your team's goals, you’ll gain shared ownership of success and a better understanding of why the team should achieve them.

This may be motivational and give you the drive to work as hard as possible to meet those goals.

7. Assess Your Personal Goals

Personal goals can be broken down into two categories: performance goals and learning goals.

Performance goals are tangible goals where you’ll have a set outcome. For example, you may be required to build specific content, reach out to specific clients, or other incremental accomplishments in your formative days in your new role.

It will be easy to identify whether you’ve achieved performance goals.

Learning goals are particularly important when starting a new venture because it requires you to familiarize yourself with the organization, processes, procedures, and culture. Learning goals may require you to take tutorials, become knowledgeable about internal software, or become familiar with the company’s workflow process.

8. Identify Top Priorities

This is where you’ll compare your personal goals to your team's goals—and build the biggest priorities within the intersection of everyone's goals.

You’ll likely see a recurring theme illuminating top priorities and big-picture information. This can help keep everyone accountable and aligned with the company's mission.

9. Define Specific Progress and KPIs

You’ll want to list out ways to identify progress.

This might look different based on what your goals are, but setting up check-ins with management can be a good solution to ensure that everyone is communicating and that a new employee can gain essential feedback on what is working and what needs improvement.

Tangible performance metrics (KPIs) are important to include here too. This could come in the form of content views, leads you can generate, or client meetings you can secure.

10. Celebrate Wins

Last but definitely not least, be sure to celebrate the wins, big or small.

Starting a new role is tough—no matter your career stage. If you learned something new or achieved an outlined goal, recognize it and celebrate it!

If you’re writing the plan for another employee, keep in mind that, according to Deloitte, recognition is highly correlated with improving employee engagement, which in turn improves job performance.

30-60-90 Day Plan Example

Here's an example of a 30-60-90 day plan that creates clear goals that adhere to a mission.

Company Name: Career Contessa

Plan for: Employee Name

Date: Month Day, Year

Company Mission:

To build and cultivate a platform that helps working women be more fulfilled, healthy, and successful at work.

Days 1–30

Personal Goal: To complete all onboarding training. All boxes should be checked as complete in the employee file.
Learning Goal: Review the company style guide and become familiar with the verbiage and tone used in company content.
Performance Goal: Write four articles to be published in the coming month.

Days 31–60

Personal Goal: Make first sales calls to potential partners or sponsors.
Learning Goal: Complete HubSpot’s Free SEO Certification Course.
Performance Goal: Increase content viewership per article and increase traffic across social platforms.

Days 61–90

Personal Goal: Work with your manager to develop an outline of topics, content offerings, and reader resources to offer for the upcoming quarter.
Performance Goal: Consistently write and post two new articles per week, along with related social content to be distributed across channels.
Performance Goal: Secure a sponsored post with an identified sponsor partner.

Resources Needed:

+HR Contact Info
+Direct Manager Contact Info
+Company Style Guide
+Grammarly Login Info
+Basecamp To-Do List
+WordPress Login
+Department Slack Channel
+HubSpot’s Free SEO Certification Course

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Michele Lando

Michele Lando is a certified professional resume writer, personal branding expert, and founder of Write Styles. Amidst the start of her career in recruiting, Michele noticed people struggling to articulate their value through an expertly crafted resume and professional appearance, which is how the idea for Write Styles was born. She has a passion for helping others present the best version of themselves both on paper and in person, and works to help individuals create a perfect personal branding package. As a certified professional resume writer, Michele provides each client with individualized attention to advise on content optimization, resume review, and overall industry insight. Michele works one-on-one with clients to craft effective application documents including resumes, cover letters, and LinkedIn profiles. Additionally, she conducts workshops and creates resources to assist with resume writing, LinkedIn optimization, and career development.