If you’re right out of school or starting a brand-new career, I’m sure you’re able to relate. I think most women experience that new-girl-on-the-block anxiety. You’re excited to be in the game and longing to make it, but you feel baffled at moments, not at all sure of how to pull off that first project, deal with your new boss effectively, or score your first big win. You’d be more than willing to accept guidance, but your boss and other senior people in your area may be too crazy busy to explain things in more than a cursory manner. At Cosmo I once had a disgruntled intern’s mother write me and say that no one had ever shown her poor daughter where the ladies’ room was. I laughed out loud when I read that. I wished the girl was still at Cosmo so I could have told her, “Sweetheart, we’re not your mommy here.” The bottom line is that when you start a new job, they may not even show you the way to the loo, let alone how to master your assignments or deal with the psycho chick who works in the cube at the end of the hall. You have to figure out all sorts of details like that on your own.

And it’s not just basic stuff you need to concentrate on. At the same time that you’re learning the lay of the land and how to handle your assigned responsibilities, you must begin plotting the moves that will make you stand out from the pack and charge ahead in your career. According to a recent Pew Research Center Report, two thirds of eighteen- to thirty-four-year-old women say being successful in a high-paying career is “one of the most important things” or “very important” in their lives (59 percent of guys feel the same way), which means you have a ton of competition. You’ll never make your mark if you concentrate solely on the assignments you’re given.

I hope I haven’t made your heart start to pound in fear. Sure, new jobs are challenging, but they’re exciting, too—they’re where you first get a taste of success and can begin to run with it.

And though, as I said before, no one in your workplace may pull up a chair, plop down beside you, and explain the ropes, I intend to do that—right now. This section of the book is all about scoring your first successes. You’ll find strategies for figuring out what your calling in life is, nailing a job interview, knocking your new boss’s socks off, trusting your gut, handling coworkers successfully, asking for what you want, generating buzz, separating yourself from the pack, and finally, propelling yourself to the next big level of your career.

I call it the go-big-or-go-home strategy. And before I even talk about the ins and outs of gaining your first career successes, I need to stress the importance of going big. It’s a strategy you need to use now and during every other stage of your career.

You’ve heard the phrase “go big or go home,” right? My first encounter with it was about five or six years ago. A young staffer used it when she was talking about her plans for Saturday night. What she meant was that if she wasn’t willing to give the whole night an extra push—with her outfit, her hair, her makeup, her attitude—she should bag the entire thing.

I secretly co-opted that phrase for everything I did in the next years at Cosmo. The magazine is geared toward fun, fearless females, and from the moment I arrived I tried to factor that into my approach. But I liked having a specific mantra to work with. With every photo, article, and cover line I began to ask myself: did I go big or go home with it? If the answer was that I went home, I gave myself a swift kick in the butt and rethought what I was doing.

Soon I began using that mantra in other parts of my life. And as I thought about it, I realized that most of my successes—and the successes of women I knew—always involved going big. Doing a job well is not enough. The key is to do more than what’s expected, power it up, go balls to the wall.

Going big doesn’t always have to involve some huge undertaking. You can go big in key little ways, too. Here’s a sampling of how I’ve used the strategy in my own career.

You’ll see the “going big” theme running through everything I talk about in this section, as well as the rest of the book. You may be just beginning in a particular job or field, but in order to score your first major successes, you’re going to have to go big—with your job search, the interviewing process, your early career moves, everything.

In this world of the supersized, going big is, in fact, probably more important now than ever. Everything seems to be bolder and even more badass. When Cosmo interviewed Pink after the birth of her daughter, she told us she was going to get back into the game full throttle. “I want my album to be really great, and I want to do an amazing tour. I’m going to up the ante, even if it means covering myself in Velcro, lighting myself on fire, and shooting myself out of a cannon. I’ll do that, no prob.”

I’m not suggesting you shoot yourself out of a cannon, but you need to push the envelope these days.

You have to be strategic, though, and assess your surroundings first. If you’re in a new job, how much (from what you can tell) will your new work culture welcome the big idea, the bold new strategy? How much will your boss welcome it? What kind of big ideas is your boss likely to be receptive to? Good bosses will respond positively and love you for it.

A small warning: when you go big, whether it’s early in your career or later, there will be people wishing you had gone home instead. Perhaps you’re pulling off a feat someone else wishes she’d thought of or you’re infringing on her turf—at least in her own mind. Or maybe one of your accomplishments has necessitated a change in someone else’s daily work MO and that person now has to take care of business each morning rather than spending an hour nibbling on his blueberry muffin. You may end up with a few haters.

Regardless, you can’t get caught up in worrying about whether everyone you work with likes you. Ultimately you want the respect of your coworkers, but you don’t need them to be your buddies. No one says this better than Mika Brzezinski, the cohost of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, whom I asked to write a work column for Cosmo. “Look, it took me twenty-five years in television news and writing two books to realize that it doesn’t matter if everyone adores me,” she says. “Being liked is what women strive for. But when you make that mistake, it diverts your attention from more important tasks at hand.”

So go big, love the thrill of it and the prizes it brings, but know that when you make a big move, it creates a big breeze, and that can sometimes ruffle feathers.

“Sorry,” John told him. “Your booker should have explained the situation. There’s nothing I can do now.”

Ten minutes later, just as the van was approaching the entrance to the highway out of the city, the model clutched his abdomen and began to moan. “Can you pull over?” he muttered to the driver. “I feel sick.” Once the van stopped, the model stepped outside, leaned over for a moment as if he was about to hurl the contents of his stomach, and then, yup, stood up and took off down the street like a bat out of hell, never again to be seen by the Cosmo crew.

I burst out laughing when I heard the story the next day. “Well,” I said to John, “at least the guy knows what his priorities are.”

One thing almost all the successful women I know have in common: they’re doing something they really love and that matters to them. Your chances of being a success are much greater when you follow a course that you’re totally passionate about. Because passion energizes you, creates clarity about your choices, and makes you fearless. And it provides plenty of pleasure. Of course, it also has to be something that pays the bills—unless you’ve got a nice trust fund.

I was passionate about writing and editing from the time I was little. At about seven I started writing plays and stories, and also producing little newspapers and minimagazines. By the time I was in high school, I was fantasizing about moving to New York one day and becoming a magazine writer or editor or author.

But just because you might not have figured it all out before you’re twenty-one doesn’t mean you’re at a huge disadvantage. It often takes people a while to discover their true passion, and that’s fine. You don’t want to get stuck toiling for years at something that barely stirs your libido. It will be tough to ever feel satisfied or grab the success that could be yours elsewhere. Plus, the longer you stay on a career path you’re not excited about, the harder it will be to shift gears into an entirely new area. Why not start thinking now about where you really should be? If a bad economy makes it difficult to act on your idea, you will at least be poised to move when things improve.

Fortunately, there are a few tricks for figuring it out. Even if you’re pretty sure of the answer already, these are good to have up your sleeve. That’s because over time, you may feel an urge or need to try something brand new but may not be sure of the possibilities. Or you may have a general sense of what you want but haven’t nailed down the specifics. These strategies should help.

Be a glutton for unusual, even weird experiences. From interviewing women for one of my previous career books, I made a fascinating discovery—though it didn’t occur to me until the book was actually published. Most of the women, I realized, had found a career they loved not by contemplating what would turn them on but by bumping into it someplace out in the world.

If you haven’t found your calling yet, the best thing to do is get your butt off your chair, fill your life with a wide array of unusual experiences, and allow yourself to bump into what will exhilarate you.

This advice may seem a bit contrary to what you’ve heard elsewhere. When you’re about to finish school (or are further along in your career but feeling restless), well-meaning family members and friends will often suggest that you “think about what you want” or grab a legal pad and list the pros and cons of a variety of fields. Or someone may direct you to a book such as What Color Is Your Parachute?, which suggests that you fill out pages of a workbook to determine your calling. That may do the trick for some people, but as I said, it’s not how many of the successful women I know figured it out. And the “bump-into-it” way is a hell of a lot more fun.

One of my former fashion editors described this serendipitous approach beautifully. I asked her one day how she had decided to become a fashion editor. My assumption was that she’d probably always loved clothes as a girl and had gone to some kind of fashion school. Her answer took me totally by surprise. She said that she’d actually been an art major in college and had graduated with no clue as to what she wanted to do. She and her boyfriend had decided to head to Africa, just for the adventur...