Nervous about your performance review ?

One of the worst things I see professionals do is fail to prepare for their performance review.

By not preparing for your performance review, you:

• Lose your negotiation power.
• You fail to account for your professional development.
• You position yourself in a reactive, rather than a proactive way vis-à-vis your career.

This year, don’t make the mistake of not preparing for your performance review.

And since a lot of businesses have their performance reviews in December, we wanted to share some tips with you to help you prepare ahead of time :

1. Write down your job–related achievements.

Aim for 3 – 5 measurable achievements you had in 2023. Think of projects you have been involved in, tasks you completed, any ideas you introduced, and any problems you solved.

To summarise your achievements, you can use either:

• STAR Method ( Situation – Task – Action – Result )

Or

• CAR Method ( Context – Action – Result )

This exercise will help you evidentiate, during the performance review, your value add, which will directly influence your ability to negotiate a promotion, benefits, salary increase, etc.

A bonus point – this will also help you evidentiate your skills during interviews, as well as help you prepare an achievement-based CV .

2. Write down your people-related achievements.

Whereas the first tip focuses on quantifiable achievements in terms of productivity and problem-solving, this second tip focuses on your soft skills.

Write down specific situations where you have smoothed over a team or client conflict or misunderstanding, situations where you participated in new employee training/ induction, client onboarding, etc.

Maybe you organized a team gathering or a volunteer day? Or maybe you resolved a critical situation for a client through your communication skills ?

For each situation you identify, write down the soft skill that is best reflected in that situation.

This tip, combined with the one above, helps you create a more thorough and objective overview of your value add, which again, will help you during negotiations and/or interviews.

3. Write down the areas you have improved on compared to last year.

If you had any specific areas of improvement/development from your last performance review, go back to those and exemplify how you tackled them, and the improvement achieved.

Perhaps you got new training, or you got involved in new tasks. Whatever it may be, the aim is to see your evolution compared to last year.

This will help you show how you have grown and developed, and it will also form a basis of reassurance that you can grow and develop further, particularly if you are eyeing a promotion.

4. Write down your expectations from a professional point of view for 2024.

Think where you’d like to be next year. Ask yourself these questions:

• What does my role look like next year?
• What skills do I want to improve next year?
• What do I need to do to improve those skills?
• What are the three most important areas I want to get further exposure to next year?

This exercise will help you discuss with your employer a professional development plan and together, agree on what you need to achieve that: it could be training, a job re-shuffle, etc.

By bringing clarity to the table, you also help your employer utilize their resources in areas that make a difference to you.

Use these 4 tips to prepare for your performance review and we have full faith that you will have a more meaningful discussion with your employer, as well as help yourself gain more clarity over your own professional development and career direction.

This is an informative article only.

Written by Fran Moisa, Founder , Headhunter - FM Search , boutique headhunting & talent advisory firm in Malta.