Congratulations. You were successful at your consultant interview and you are now looking forward to the next phase of your career. So what happens next? It’s easy to think of the journey as being essentially complete at this point, but we strongly advocate using this period—between acceptance and starting—productively to ensure that your interview success turns into a fulfilling consultant career. This chapter outlines some of the key things to consider during the period leading up to starting as a consultant and in those very first few days and weeks in your new post. The chapter starts by looking at some of the immediate considerations: • When should you resign? • When should you start? • Should you take a break? It then moves on to think about how you start to establish yourself in the first 90 days as a new consultant—probably the most important period you have to face yet! It is very tempting, having been offered a consultant post, to immediately resign your StR or SAS post—don’t! Your offer of a post no doubt came with some conditions. These might include: • Subject to references • Subject to a satisfactory health check • Subject to confirmation of your qualifications Until you have confirmation that all of the conditions have been satisfied, hold back from handing in your notice. We’re not being pessimistic and you are probably reasonably certain that everything will be fine, but until you actually hand in notice, you have full employment rights with your present employer, even if they know that you intend to leave. Until you have the security of employment confirmation without conditions, it is just safer to be cautious. Depending on factors such as the remaining length of your post, etc., it is usual to have to give 3 months’ notice if you are resigning from an StR or SAS post. If you are in a locum consultant position, check your contract and if necessary seek advice from Medical Staffing. Before deciding on your resignation date consider what this might mean for your starting date.