If your company is one of the many gearing up for year-end performance reviews this month, you may be asked to write a self-assessment as part of that process.
Lots of people freeze up when asked to assess their own performance, worried that they’ll come across as braggarts if they rate themselves highly, or that they’ll undercut themselves if they’re too modest.
Here’s how to take the mystery out of the process and write an effective self-assessment.
1. Instead of dreading the self-assessment, see it as an opportunity. Writing a self-assessment is a chance to remind your manager about key highlights of your work that she might not otherwise have at the forefront of her mind as she sits down to assess your performance. After all, you’re more intimately familiar with the nuances of your work than your manager likely is, especially if she manages a large number of people. See this as a chance to make sure that you’re both working with the same data. And many managers will even pull language directly from a self-assessment and put it into their own evaluation of you.
Additionally, self-assessments can be a valuable way to spot areas where you and your manager have different perspectives on your work. That’s important. If you think you’ve been doing a great job at account management, and she thinks your work in that area has been lackluster, you need to know that. That information can help you figure out what’s causing the discrepancy.
2. Keep your focus on what outcomes you achieved this year. People often focus their self-assessments on soft skills, such as how they get along with colleagues, how well they communicate or how much initiative they take. Those things matter, but a performance evaluation, including a self-assessment, should look at what you achieved this year. So, start by listing out what your major goals were for the year, then reflect on what progress you made against them. And be specific. Don’t just say, “The X project was a success.” Instead you should say, “The X project came in under budget and ahead of deadlines, garnered enthusiastic praise from the client — who called it ‘one of the smartest campaigns I’ve seen’ — and resulted in a 15 percent increase in sales. “
3. Don’t be falsely modest when it comes to rating yourself. Your manager isn’t looking for false modesty. She’s looking for your true assessment of how your work is going. If you rate yourself lower than you think you deserve, you risk influencing your manager in that direction, too. You also lose much of the value of the entire exercise.
If you have trouble tooting your own horn, try this exercise. Pretend that someone accused you of not playing a very valuable role on your team. What would you point to as refutation of that? What specific contributions have you made that would be evidence of your value? Your answers should point you toward how you should be describing your work in your self-assessment. To be clear, the point here isn’t to feel defensive, just to get you into a frame of mind where you’re comfortable talking about your own achievements.
4. Don’t give yourself falsely high ratings either. If you give yourself the highest rating in every category when you’ve had some significant failures, or your manager has been coaching you to improve your work, you’re likely to come across as out-of-touch or lacking self-awareness. Strive for honesty. Try asking yourself how your manager or a trusted colleague would likely rate you.
5. Be straightforward about areas where you need to improve. If you’re struggling in a particular area or with a particular skill or goal, use this opportunity to reflect on what’s going on and how you can improve. If your manager is doing her job, she’s going to bring it up anyway. It will be a much easier conversation if you’ve already acknowledged the problem. Of course, this assumes that you have a competent and fair manager. If your manager is the sort to punish this kind of honesty, modify accordingly.
6. Don’t forget to look back at last year’s performance evaluation. If there were issues raised there, or goals set out that you’ve been working on, your self-assessment this year should reflect on your progress in those areas. Reviewing last year’s document might also help you ground what you’re writing in some historical context. For example, you might note that you were still working to master skill X last year, and you’ve successfully used that skill to accomplish Y and Z this year.
7. Start planning for next year’s evaluation early. This is a good time to ask yourself what you want next year’s evaluation to say about you, then plan out what you need to do throughout the upcoming year to achieve that. You might also set up a “kudos” file that you add to throughout the year, storing emails with praise for your work, notes about project successes and other specifics that will help you when you sit down to write your self-assessment this time next year.
More from U.S. News
5 Ways to Prepare for an Internal Interview
8 Signs That You’re a Problem Employee
Assess Your Skills, Weaknesses in a Performance Review originally appeared on usnews.com
