Frankly, every one of us hates our performance review, but please don’t hate it. The key to making the best out of your performance review is to be sure you really know yourself, be sure to understand your work, be sure of the corporate culture in your organization or firm, all of these would be key to enhancing your annual reviews.
Instead of hating on your performance review, try to divert this energy into finding out and checking how you can manoeuvre or manipulate the performance review to your own advantage instead. Understanding of yourself, your role and the company culture would be integral towards you delivering a better job and improving your pay.
Here are some rules you could follow to turn your review into your own advantage.
The First Rule Is To Understand The System
You definitely cannot manipulate something you don’t entirely know about. For instance, working with the organization for the first time then for your first review, it is in your best interest if you talk to your human resource manager or speak to your colleagues in order to understand the process or protocols of the organization. Talking to them would give you a better and explanatory understanding of your role and the company itself.
The Second Rule Is To Draw Out A Career Plan For Yourself
Setting a plan to inform of a goal helps you understand where you are heading to and helps you come up with how to attain the end point you so desire. In order to enjoy all the benefits of the review it is best you actually have a sense of your destination and where you are heading career wise. Having a career path or plan is having a vision of where you want to machine or direct your career towards.
Understand and picture what the career path you choose looks for you. Most times you definitely might have a hard time deciding on how the end of your career should be or wat path to follow, s it might be right to speak to your manager or human resource manager to help you with your career vision but regardless at a point you would have to take charge and take ownership of the career vision in the long run.
Another Very Important Rule Is You Have To Actively Prepare For Annual Reviews
A whole lot of you go into reviews either intentionally or not, we head towards reviews passively and lazily. Long before your review arrives, examine yourself and evaluate yourself of your performance in the last few months, check how you really performed in the last months after the last review, check if you actually improved from the last review. What did you really achieve and what you could not achieve and why you could not achieve them, all of these must be fully self-evaluated before the review shows up.
Always Try To Quantify Your Successes
During a review, don’t think it’s wrong for you to counter some of the reviews especially if you have substantial proof of your achievements or a counter motion of the review. Did you perhaps meet your target, you achieved a lot compared to others with great reviews? then it’s best you speak and quantify your achievements so you can rattle the information off.
Try To Get Or Collect Feedback From Other People
Most times trying to run your personal evaluation might not be entirely void of bias, so it is best advised you seek the opinion of your peers, or even direct reports from other managers or better still seek opinions or feedback from customers and stakeholders.
Set Your Personal Agenda And Goal
We always make the mistake of believing that the review process is always wrapped up around your boss or employers’ expectation that you are fulfilling or not and this is a very wrong perception.
The process of your reviews is meant to be taken charge and controlled by you so you can benefit a hundred percent from it. When you set the plan or agenda you are making sure that your career plan aligns and tallies with the review process.
Always Be Active In Listening And Passive In Talking
It is in your best interest to always listen to comments and feedback during interviews, especially the unsaid ones. Most times it might be quite enticing for you to discredit anything that doesn’t sound positive especially when you don’t entirely like your boss.
You have to listen attentively to board criticism and take it with good heart and improve or learn from them in the process., which would definitely be of great advantage to you in the long run. After you have actively listened then you can ask questions before flaunting up on your list of achievements.