How to breeze through your next performance review

If like most of us you are a cog in the wheel at a BB, this is the time of year for performance reviews / objective setting. For some this can be a bit of a stressful time, especially if you feel like you haven’t done much to show for the past year and you have little to no motivation for the year ahead. If you stick to a script you can be in and out of your performance review in 15 minutes and back at your cage cube before your know it. Read on for some tips

Don’t Panic, Prepare a General Script

It’s an awkward conversation to have so you’re going to have some awkward banter to start, but then again all office banter is pretty awkward - so after you spend 5 minutes talking about how excited you are about the 50 game NHL season or how you always new Jodi Foster played for the other team you’ll get hit with ”So how do you think you did this year”. Don’t panic this is where you launch into your script which has 3 basic elements:

  • Generic positive statement about how the year went
  • Something that you acknowledge you could’ve done better
  • Generic statement about how you’re excited for the year ahead

Highlight Your Strengths

The key is to highlight your strengths first and then identify an area of improvement before your manager has the chance to. No one’s perfect so don’t act like you were. Coming out with guns blazing and showing that you know where you messed up means you’re not delusional and you know where you need to improve.

How to Game Your Self-Eval

If your performance management system includes more than just the conversation, i.e. self eval that you review with your manager, there are some ways to game the system there too. In a lot of cases, you can fill out the self eval with just about anything that sounds coherent and generously rate yourself. Most managers are too busy to read through and change anything so they will just give the sign off and you’re done.

If you’re not so lucky and your manager actually cares about these numbers then you can play an odds game. Usually you’ll be evaluated on a few dimensions (What, How, etc) giving yourself a score for each. As a rule, always give yourself higher marks than you deserve in at least one category (of course you’ll need to be able to back it up). You will usually get away with this. Think of it this way, if you give yourself an average ranking you then put it on your manager to justify ranking you higher. If you give yourself higher marks and you sound reasonably credible, your manager would have a harder time justifying giving you a lower rating. Don’t go marking yourself as a perfect employee either, this is not something to be abused, use this carefully.

Prepare Talking Points

Whatever the case may be, treat your review like an interview: prepare your talking points before hand. Be prepared to pull out examples of why you did well and at least one thing you can improve on and how you plan to do so. Remeber, don't stress, these things are just a formality any way...

 

My 1 year is coming up.. Colleagues have said I'll get the 3-5% raise. I'm already HEAVILY underpaid.

Would asking for 15-20% be risky? My boss knows I'm underpaid and has even joked about it

 
SRRubio123:
My 1 year is coming up.. Colleagues have said I'll get the 3-5% raise. I'm already HEAVILY underpaid.

Would asking for 15-20% be risky? My boss knows I'm underpaid and has even joked about it

It is your bosses job to set comp expectations. It is also yours. Everyone thinks they are underpaid, so bring a cogent argument as to why you believe you are underpaid. Be prepared to get your resume ready and pound the pavement for something new if they don't deliver. If you set realistic expectations and they give you a shit bonus anyway, they know they can get away with it next year. Your only viable alternative is to leave at that point.
 
SirTradesaLot:
SRRubio123:
My 1 year is coming up.. Colleagues have said I'll get the 3-5% raise. I'm already HEAVILY underpaid.

Would asking for 15-20% be risky? My boss knows I'm underpaid and has even joked about it

It is your bosses job to set comp expectations. It is also yours. Everyone thinks they are underpaid, so bring a cogent argument as to why you believe you are underpaid. Be prepared to get your resume ready and pound the pavement for something new if they don't deliver. If you set realistic expectations and they give you a shit bonus anyway, they know they can get away with it next year. Your only viable alternative is to leave at that point.
x 2

Depending on how long you plan on staying.. Use it as an opportunity to set measurable goals and quantify as much as possible, so the following year you can go in and say I did A, B, C, and D like I was supposed to and on top of that I did E.... It's hard for them to deny hard facts or brush it off.

 

Hey ILikeCommercialRealEstate, sorry about the delay, but are any of these useful:

  • How should I prepare for my first annual review with my boss? My firm does annual reviews the first quarter of the year (I believe includes revealing annual ... and assuming yes, how should I phrase it? My rationale is I'm looking out for myself and my ... him often and send him information when he requests it. How do I prepare? Should
  • The 24 Interview Lessons I Learned on the Way to Getting My First Full Time Job the road to my first job out of university. I started brainstorming in rough chronological order by ... the date of interview so don't construe this as a list by importance, EXCEPT for the first and ... should be completed immediately upon beginning your interview preparation, and will guide your focus. 4. ...
  • First Year Annual Review I'm meeting with an MD for my 'annual review' tomorrow morning. He didn't ... 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. bonus
  • My boss hates me and is trying to fire me – how should I respond? (not great, but not bad). However unfortunately I have a very bad relationship with my immediate boss ... I am a first year Analyst working in Sales at a BB, my overall performance so far has been average ... (VP level), from the moment I joined her team she took an instant disliking to me. During my first few ...
  • My boss is letting me choose my job title- How will these two positions compare for an application? 3 years in France (Think Teach for America with waaaaay less prestige/name recognition). My current job ... come to him for advice and he has some high ranking contacts at the major financial institutions doing ... processing receipts, and dealing with syllabi and stuff for the registrar's office (boring back office ...
  • How Do I Prepare for my First Day as an I-Banking Analyst? its uncommon for people to come out of my school with an investment banking offer). So to anyone ... offer. However, I'm not entirely sure I know exactly how to best prepare myself for the job. After ... coming off the rush I got from getting the offer, I'm starting to worry that maybe my education ...
  • My Old Boss is an Asshole- can he ruin my background check? how I should represent my work for him on my resume and come to an agreement on that. Since I ended my ... a problem with my boss from my previous internship and am wondering how much damage he can do. Here's ... email or call me with a bunch of names he wanted some rese
  • More suggestions...

Calling relevant pros to the rescue! mrfcflanker tennisguy30 geology rocks

I hope those threads give you a bit more insight.

I'm an AI bot trained on the most helpful WSO content across 17+ years.
 
Best Response

Don't send a self critique to him. Do write down a short list of things that you have accomplished this year and things that you are proud of. Then write down 3 goals that you would like to accomplish this year and how you are going to do it. Then print out a list of your job responsibilities and rate how you did on a 1-5 scale. 5 being an 'absolute mastery' and 1 meaning 'you're on notice'. Use this to indentify what skills you would like to focus on developing in the next year..

Just have this stuff prepared. It will most likely be a conversation with him and he might ask you questions that pertain to the things I mentioned above. Just come prepared.

Also hold on to this stuff for your next review to demonstrate goals being set and accomplished. It doesn't sound like your company uses an official system for this.

 
•Generic positive statement about how the year went •Something that you acknowledge you could’ve done better •Generic statement about how you’re excited for the year ahead

Gotta love the "Compliment Sandwich"! Good post, OP!

http://www.youtube.com/embed/ewIT_KAQQlU

"My caddie's chauffeur informs me that a bank is a place where people put money that isn't properly invested."
 

Hi ILikeCommercialRealEstate, any of these threads helpful:

  • How should I prepare for my first annual review with my boss coming up? My firm does annual reviews the first quarter of the year (I believe includes revealing annual ... and assuming yes, how should I phrase it? My rationale is I'm looking out for myself and my ... him often and send him information when he requests it. How do I prepare? Should
  • First Year Annual Review I'm meeting with an MD for my 'annual review' tomorrow morning. He didn't ... 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. bonus first
  • The 24 Interview Lessons I Learned on the Way to Getting My First Full Time Job the road to my first job out of university. I started brainstorming in rough chronological order by ... the date of interview so don't construe this as a list by importance, EXCEPT for the first and ... should be completed immediately upon beginning your interview preparation, and will guide your focus. 4. ...
  • The Last "what should I do with my money?" Thread (hopefully) this much money, what should I do with it?" And the amounts have ranged from $2,000 to $20mm, and ... experiences on how he's invested his money, but if you ask for stock tips before you've gotten basic ... for whatever that's worth. No matter how much money you have, you need to learn basic personal ...
  • How Do I Prepare for my First Day as an I-Banking Analyst? offer. However, I'm not entirely sure I know exactly how to best prepare myself for the job. After ... its uncommon for people to come out of my school with an investment banking offer). So to anyone ... hasn't adequately prepared me for a career in banking (I don't go to an ivy league or anything, and ...
  • The First Annual WSO Fantasy Macro League 2014 which we need to learn about. My plan is to run this for 6 months and then crown a champion who will get ... simple. 10 players. each player must submit 2 trades each week. Each Trade should have a thought out idea ... book between weeks only on the weekend using friday closing prices. Each player starts with 100MM ...
  • Interview with boutique investment bank. How should I prepare? I should prepare for. It's a phone interview. 1st interview ... I won't go into my background or anything unless anyone asks. I just want to know what ...
  • More suggestions...

No promises, but thought I'd mention a few relevant users that work in the industry: abaccarin marcomoura spur5

If those topics were completely useless, don't blame me, blame my programmers...

I'm an AI bot trained on the most helpful WSO content across 17+ years.
 

In my experience, at the analyst level reviews are pretty fair. Politics start to play a role as you move up the ladder, but if you're doing a good job this should be reflected in your review. Whatever happens, take any negative feedback to heart, thank them for any guidance on how you can improve, and then work your ass off to act on that feedback. A big part of your NEXT review will be how well you improved on the specific action points they give you early on... and there will be substantially more at stake in your next review compared to your first.

By the way - don't ever get defensive about negative feedback if you do receive it, no matter how unfair you think it is. Trust me, this will only hurt you.

And for what it's worth, I've done very well for the past few years but I STILL get very nervous months before review season... I see this as a healthy mechanism to keep me from slipping away into mediocrity. When you become complacent and stop getting nervous about reviews is precisely when you are at the greatest risk of messing up.

 

I might have read that three years ago in a rush (along with a number of other articles) when I was desperately trying to figure out how to handle my first self-assessment, but I haven't read anything on self-assessments recently. I know what works now. Maybe there could be some very loose and inadvertent plagiarism in there to the same extent that your Calculus textbook plagiarizes other Calculus textbooks when it comes to the concept of the Mean Value Theorem; there's some common best practices that everyone agrees on.

That said, some of this stuff probably isn't going to be in efinancialcareers because it's specific to the experiences of an analyst. As a first and second year employee, I didn't have the balls to walk into my boss's or MD's office, shut the door, and lecture him about fighting for algorithmic trading- but I had a convenient way of doing it with the self-assessment summary.

Given that I am posting from work, I can't put the cynical and brutally honest spin on this that I'd like; hence I'm putting a more positive spin on this just in case I ever have to explain myself to HR; hence the career guide-sounding tone. (If, just for kicks, I were saying the non-bonus self-review were a waste of time, it would be a much more awkward conversation with HR. OBVIOUSLY, that's just a random example and may or may not be true.)

 

To me the review process is like a parent speaking to their child. If you respect your parents/boss opinion then it's constructive. If you don't, then it's meaningless.

Needless to say, my next review is meaningless to me. My last review was nothing but bold faced lies so I don't expect this one to be any different.

 
Bottles and <abbr title=discounted cash flow><abbr title=discounted cash flow>DCF</abbr></abbr> Models:
To me the review process is like a parent speaking to their child. If you respect your parents/boss opinion then it's constructive. If you don't, then it's meaningless.

Needless to say, my next review is meaningless to me. My last review was nothing but bold faced lies so I don't expect this one to be any different.

transitive property is telling me you hate your boss

and great post illini, i've bookmarked for future use

looking for that pick-me-up to power through an all-nighter?
 

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