US
You’ve worked hard all year, now it all comes down to the official assessment. If only you could be in the room to represent yourself, if only you could be in control. For two decades, this was my refrain after getting back from the summer holidays.
While it is not really possible to “cram for the exam,” there are some things that will help.
1) Know the process:
What is measured, when and by whom? Find out the due date for evaluations, add a week or two for the usual slippage, and that’s the date by which those who need to know must be in the know about what you’ve done. Don’t be that poor soul trying for brownie points when it’s too late. Also, the typical 360 process gives you a say in who evaluates you. Choose people who (a) know what you have done, (b) will take time to give you proper feedback, and (c) won’t compete with you for credit. Work with your boss on this — they should have a vested interest in helping you to shine.
2) Know what you’ve done:
Write a good self-evaluation. Note your improvements relative to last year’s feedback. Cover the accomplishments from the entire year, not just what you’ve done lately. Keep it focused, cite concrete results and resist the temptation to over-embellish. Direct reports of mine who wrote pages and pages of gory detail, or sounded like they were writing fiction did themselves no favours. Done properly, your self-evaluation will be a script for your boss to promote you to others.
3) Find more opportunities to shine:
Even now, seek assignments that allow you to emphasize your strengths and show how you’ve overcome weaknesses. Make each project count since there have been fewer this year. Create your own business ideas and extracurricular leadership opportunities if no other projects are forthcoming. Research shows that recent events are more memorable than things done in the past, so try to find things to do that impress even now.
4) (Re)connect wih your evaluators:
Especially if you worked together early in the year. Update them on how you built on that success or learned from mistakes. Otherwise it is like winking at someone in the dark — you know you’ve done it, but no one else does. Call on clients together so they can see you in action, and make use of travel time to catch up and get advice. Remind your boss of your ambitions and ask whether there are remaining areas you need to address, especially if this is a promotion year. How you do this is important: your goal is to get your boss on side, and remind him or her of how valuable you are without being annoying or over the top.
5) Keep your head in it:
Stay focused on the job at hand. Be cool. Model the behaviours that are valued by the firm. There is nothing worse than having a team member who is so busy worrying about themselves that their performance slips.
Once you’ve done what you can, then relax and let the chips fall where they may. And, of course, you could always get a jump on next year…
May Busch is a former chief operating officer for EMEA, head of European firm relationship management, and co-head of global capital markets coverage at Morgan Stanley.
Meh. We all just say we’re all great. If someone scores bad their manager scores bad and their managers scores bad etc. Keep your head down, make up a bull weakness which can be resolved by the next one thus showing progress (e.g “Billy needs to cooperate with marketing more” 6 months later “Billy successfully completes project with marketing” Great success all round! Billy has progressed and Billy’s boss is an inspirational leader.). The trick is to have a manager more cynical than yourself. No one actually believes this guff.
in 2 words? “kiss ass”
“Hello I’m a trader and I made money. This is how much money I made:…” What more of a evaluation do you need than that?
HR=Hardly Relevant
One thing the column sorely misses is references to the “normalization process” which goes on in most banks after grades have been assigned. The true truth is that on a scale of A to D, it’s only about A or B, as C means “maybe you should consider other opportunities”, as opposed to “meets requirements”.
Therefore what happens is that all lien managers have got truckloads of As, some Bs, and the odd C for a runt they’d like to dispense with, and HR chases them down for weeks forcing them to argue with other line managers over who in the department should be bumped down so that HR can have a big circle [omissis] while staring at the beauty of the Gaussian distribution.
Spool is spot-on.
Many firms use a grossly unfair bell-curve figure for a group so staff can be either marked up or down (unfairly) so the manager can meet that figure. Net result is that a staff member could be marked down when they have performed briliiantly hence my previous comment, what a joke.
Scot Herrick has written in detail about the “normalization” process and what it means for employees in terms of gaming their rating and review. Nevertheless he still contends that employees have much to gain (and nothing to lose) by submitting a complete and accurate self-review. See http://cuberules.com/category/performance-reviews/ , and especially, http://cuberules.com/2009/09/23/the-one-performance-review-fact-you-cant-tell-your-coworkers/