The first few months of a job can be nerve-racking, for obvious reasons.
They can also be exhilarating — if you were known at your last job as the office goofball or the guy who always missed deadlines, here's your chance to make a great impression on your new coworkers.
But in an effort to wow the entire office, too many people wind up looking foolish instead.
That's according to Lynn Taylor, a national workplace expert and the author of "Tame Your Terrible Office Tyrant: How to Manage Childish Boss Behavior and Thrive in Your Job."
"People make this mistake in their first 100 days on the job: They try to impress their boss and everybody, including their CEO," she told Business Insider. "So they might use fancy language — words they don't understand the meaning of. They ask questions for the sake of asking a question, but they haven't done their homework. They try to sometimes seem like they've come up with the answers to everyone's problems or a solution, when if they had done their homework, they would have seen it's already in place."
Taylor's observations go back to something Amanda Augustine, an expert in career advice for TopResume, previously told Business Insider: In your first week of a new job, be humble. Definitely don't counter a coworker's comment with, "Well, in my old company, we did it this way."
Perhaps the best advice for anyone starting a new job is to simply be yourself. We know — it sounds lame. But the company hired you, not the fancy-pants, know-it-all version of you. Show your coworkers that they made the right choice.
