How to Write a Self-Evaluation for Work: 6 Critical Steps
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Dreading the self-evaluation? I can’t blame you. It’s a lot of work. Remembering your accomplishments over the last year is hard. And the consequences are momentous. Your self-evaluation can impact your compensation.
Have no fear. I’ve got a 6 step process to help you make your way through your self-evaluation.
Determine the criteria
Step 1, figure out how your work will be judged.
The last thing you want to do is bring up accomplishments that are unimportant to your boss. Depending on where you work, you could be evaluated by one of the following:
Job responsibilities
Business goals
Company values
Combination of the items above
Brainstorm your accomplishments
Step 2, list out as many notable accomplishments as you can. You can use bullet point format if you’d like.
This is the hard part.
I can barely remember what happened in the last 48 hours let alone what happened in the last year. But don’t slack off. Push push push. Get every single possible accomplishment down.
This is your chance to get the record straight. Your self-evaluation will be stored in your permanent record. It’ll be shared with HR and your boss’ boss. It will be summarized verbally with your boss’ peers during calibration meetings. Because this record is so important, you need to make sure you haven’t missed anything.
To jog your memory, use the following as stimulus:
Criteria on how you’ll be judged
Documents where you track your tasks and projects
Old emails and calendar appointments
Details matter
Step 3, build on the brainstormed bullet points and add details.
Your self-evaluation is evidence for your performance rating. And evidence is more credible when it’s detailed. So don’t skimp.
Start by making your statements as quantitative as possible. Instead of “I drove the sales funnel” use “I exceeded sales quota by 37% as the #1 sales rep out of 75 in the Western region.” Estimated quantitative impact can work too; just do a back-of-the-envelope calculation.
And if your work doesn’t naturally contain numbers, you can substitute with qualitative statements such as “Launched ___ project which was named by our EVP Frances Sanchez as the project of the year, which included an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii.”
Lastly, be precise by using names of people, places, and projects. Instead of “I made a big sales presentation,” try “I presented the Acme product roadmap to 2,500 attendees at the Acme sales conference in Miami.”
As you can imagine, after adding details, your bullet points should start to look like coherent sentences.
Don’t be verbose
Step 4, edit your coherent sentences so it’s easy-to-understand.
While I’m an ardent believer of details, that doesn’t mean you have permission to be verbose.
You can be detailed without being wordy.
For example, some people love to introduce themselves in the following manner:
“My name is ___. I graduated from a prestigious university in New England with a liberal arts degree.”
After reading (or hearing) this, our minds will wander:
Which university in New England? Harvard? Brown? Yale? Boston U?
What kind of liberal arts degree? Political science? Or English? Or Art History?
Save your readers from all this speculation. Just spit it out:
“My name is ___. I graduated from Harvard with an economics degree.”
Not verbose at all. Few words. More detailed. More precise. And 1,000% more effective.
Categorize
Step 5, categorize your accomplishments.
Depending on what’s appropriate for your company, categorize your accomplishments into buckets, using categories that are most effective for your situation.
For example, your boss may want your accomplishments categorized by business objectives. Other companies may want your accomplishments categorized by values.
Here’s an example of what the output should look like:
Deliver Results
Generated 40 financial reports per week, which were distributed to 5,000 people.
Invent and Simplify
Reduced time needed to generate 40 financial reports from 1 week to 2 hours and saved the team 2 full-time headcount worth $150,000 per year.
Earn Trust of Others
Organized and presented a brown bag lunch session to teach Tableau 101 Basics to 50 attendees.
Held office hours every single week of Q3 to troubleshoot co-workers Excel macros
Share with your boss and beyond
Step 6, share your accomplishments.
The obvious person to share with is your boss. A clearly categorized, documented, quantified list of accomplishments will help them make the case for why you deserve a high-performance rating.
But don’t stop there. Are there other people who will influence your final rating? Some individuals to consider:
Your boss’ boss
Your boss’ peers
Your HR contact
These individuals may sit in your performance rating calibration meeting. Help them make the case for your high rating by providing them a categorized list of accomplishments.
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