I'm meeting with an MD for my 'annual review' tomorrow morning. He didn't elaborate. I assume this is how most banks disclose bonus numbers (ours are paid in December). I doubt it will affect my number but is there anything I can do to prepare for this like maybe come up with with my own commentary on my performance? Again, thanks in advance.
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Your first annual review is very scary. Annual reviews stay kinda scary until you've got an established track record or have a lot of money in the bank.
Just relax. Take some St. John's wort and LISTEN. You don't have to agree with what you're hearing, but you have to LISTEN and SAY THANK YOU.
As it is your first year, you will probably not have a bonus discussion right away if you were hired in August. You will instead get a number from 1-5 or a grade from A-F or something like that. Most analysts get a C/3/"Meets Expectations" their first year/review. It's very rare for a first-year to do better than that.
Why are they scarry Illini? They designed to intimidate you?
At least at my bank, at the annual review you do not get the bonus number but you do get your tier/rank/bucket. IP is wrong though, tiering is almost always within analyst class. First year analysts are graded separately from second years, etc, so you have just as good a chance of getting top bucket your first year as any other year (at least in IBD)
My first year at a BB, analysts got Bs, Cs, and Ds but nobody got an A as far as I was aware. There is tiering, but tiering is done within that range.
But do you think they will ask for my input ie how I think I've performed?
Julian - it all depends on your MD. There are those who'll just call you in, tell you your bucket, and say "keep up the good work" - or something to that effect - without really discussing if you did well or not. There are others who'll have a 30-mins heart-to-heart about your performance. Most are somewhere in the middle though, in which case they'll probably ask you how you think you did. Or maybe not as directly, but something like "how have the first 6 months been for you so far?"
If you have to answer, you absolutely need to be positive but also humble enough to say something general along the lines of "of course I still need to continue improving on certain aspects, but I think I've worked hard up to this point and intend to continue in the same fashion". But you can't go in and say: "yeah, I've fucked up a couple of times, sorry", 'cause chances are, your MD might not even know about your fuckups.
I agree with IP that in the first 6 months it's hard to differentiate, so many banks use that first review to tell YOU how they THINK you're doing thus far and what you need to improve on. Many senior analysts / associates / VPs are too passive-aggressive to tell you up-front, so all that gets accumulated in reviews.
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