Mid year review time

With mid year reviews coming up in Jan I'm interested in people's experience making the case for a promotion. The written feedback I have received has rated me well above expectations on engagements, I've had informal feedback to the same affect and was bluntly told this week I'm at the wrong level for my work quality. I've also been fortunate to have been involved in two engagements that were published as research/thought leadership pieces.

This is my first review beyond an informal process when my probation ended. I'm worried that they'll say something like yes you've done well so we will promote you 1 week early - instead of 4 months earlier (as in straight after reviews).

11 Comments
 

Just relax and if this is your first year, try not to respond immediately if you experience a strong reaction. Say thank you and leave.

THEN think about it and sleep on it. Call Mom & Dad or other people and ask them if they think it's fair. If not, that's when you go back in there a couple days later and say that you did X, Y, and Z but you got paid $R for the year. This is ideal if you have some leverage (IE: an offer elsewhere.)

 

To describe more, what i'm trying to be conscious of was during my two years of banking, I feel like I was probably too passive about taking feedback that I disagreed with (e.g people assumed that I was sloppy because I was a fast worker, whereas mistakes were few and far between but the rep stuck). While I agree there's nothing you can do about the number, it does set others expectations, somewhat permanently

Would anyone recommend the official review channel to convey disagreements (if any) or should it be a back-channel full-court press sort of thing. Off the cuff, I presume at most places the latter is probably a better idea.

 

I think the key is to not come off as defensive. Again, it's all dependent on the culture of your firm. I think that having a discussion off-line with your reviewers (or people you work with) would make sense. If you only sit down with the boss conducting the review once a year, he/she's only aggregating the info from all the various reviews that you received. He/she has no clue as to how you work day to day.

 

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