Preparing for a Performance Review
I have questions about performance reviews:
What can I expect to happen at a performance review?
How should I prepare?
I have been preparing for my performance review by tracking the goals they set for me and making sure I am meeting and exceeding them. However, I was curious if there was anything I needed to do right before my performance review?
Should I create a list of great projects I have worked on and results I have created?
Should I bring a list to the meeting to help me stay on track?
Should I send an email to my supervisors prior to the meeting with notes and details from the past year?
Should I expect a raise or do I need to ask for one?
I am expecting to get a raise at my review but I wasn’t sure if I needed to ask for one or if they would offer me one?
What if I don’t like the raise they offer me? How should I prepare?
These are all really good questions. The broad answer is that a performance review should be largely perfunctory because you should be preparing for it all year.
All the things you list that you might be doing during a performance review are things you can do earlier. Because by the time the performance review rolls along, it is directly after the budget has been set, so raises have already been set.
Your boss does not have wiggle room after telling his boss what your review will be. However your boss has lots of leeway during the year, as he steers you to take action to meet your goals so you are positioned to get a raise at review time.
You should be talking each week with your boss about weekly goals and how those fit into larger goals. On a weekly basis you should make sure you are doing things that resonate with your boss in terms of what he needs in order to give you a raise.
The performance review should contain no surprirses and there should be nothing new there for you. You should have already asked, directly, much earlier, will I be getting a good review? Will I be getting a rasie? And if your boss did not say yes at that point, you should have asked what you can do to get a yes.
By the time the review rolls around, it’s probably too late.
I know this doesn’t help for this year. However the best way to understand how to manage your boss throughout the year is to go to a performance review and hear what matters to him, and what you’re being evaluated on, and then adhere to that religiously during the next twelve
months.
Finally, one of the most effective tactics in a botched performance review — where it’s too late to get a raise — is to ask for non-financial compensation. Here are some tips for doing that:
http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2003/01/06/what-to-ask-for-if-more-money-is-not-an-option/.
Penelope