Prepare for Your Year-End Review in Tech: Getting the Career Outcomes you want.

It’s annual review season again!

Time to prepare for Tech Performance Reviews! The time of endless Lattice and Workday notifications and having to carve time out of your schedule to write your self review.

If you are like most people, this is usually an anxiety inducing process as you comb through emails, old project documents, and forgotten OKRs to paint a picture of all that you have accomplished over the last year.

For others, this time of reflection can often prompt them to wonder what’s next. Am I up for a promotion? How does my manager really feel about me? or am I going to get PIPed?

Wherever you fall on that spectrum, there are several core strategies that can help help you navigate your annual performance review Effectively.

Tell your own story with data

When you are able to tell a strong story about your work with data, this helps your manager not only understand what you have accomplished but also helps make it easier for them to advocate for you in calibration and review sessions. Impactful data is the key to unlocking a strong performance review.

The first step is to think through and make an inventory of what the most impactful projects you worked on over the last year, what their impact was (hint use metrics here 🙂 ) and what your role was in making that happen. By first taking a personal inventory, you can then better prioritize which stories you are going to include in your own personal review.

Make sure to layer your impact by connecting it to department and company goals. Once you have collected your list of achievements, one helpful exercise is to think about them at the department and company level. Did you build and release a new feature as an engineer? Maybe that helped with the department goal of improving user engagement. Ask yourself how your work helped the department and the company and what number you would look at to know if that was true.

HBR has a great article on how to tell stories with data if you are looking to get started.

Make a game plan

Now that you have your list of accomplishments it’s time to think critically about what you want out of the review process and prepare yourself for different potential outcomes. Are you expecting a promotion? Perhaps a Raise? Are you worried about being placed on a PIP and heading for burnout? Whatever your situation, it is important to think critically and imagine what your managers game plan might be for your performance review. Developing a strong mental model of what the likely outcomes are and what they mean for you is critical to getting the best outcomes out of a performance review.

Prepare for your Performance Review.

Set a pre-meeting with your manager

Now that you have a list of your accomplishments along with data to back them up and a strong impact narrative it is time to have a pre meeting with your manager.

Ideally, You should make time to review this list with your manager before submitting your review. The most effective way to have this type of meeting is to ask for advice on which work examples to include in your review. Keep it open ended and light. The goal is to get as much information as possible to calibrate your actual submitted review. Do they agree with your perception of your work? Which projects do they seem most interested in? Which less so?

Use their spoken and unspoken feedback to gauge which stories are going to be more impactful to include.

Another critical step is to lightly ask how they are thinking about their review? What projects are they going to include? This information will tell you a lot about what they care about and you can tailor your review accordingly.

Get ahead of the peer-review process

Another key area, where I have seen a lot of people botch their annual review process in tech is by blindly sending their peer review requests. That VP that doesn’t even know your name? A colleague who you worked with on a project 11 months ago? Lots of peers doing the same role as you? None of these will yield the feedback that will create a strong performance review for you.

Instead, it is critical to use the ancient Japanese practice of Nemawashi, that is to ask for feedback before formally asking for it. Create a list of who the most impactful 4 – 5 individuals are that can provide feedback on your work. In the months and weeks prior to review season, make sure to proactively set checkins with them. Remind them about the work that you did together and ask them if they would be open to writing a review for you. This way, when they have 15 review requests, you ensure that you are top of mind and that they remember what you worked on together.

Conclusion

Annual performance reviews don’t have to be anxiety inducing. By listing and measuring your achievements, pre-meeting with your manager and pre-networking with internal reviewers you can ensure that you create the best self review possible for you and position all of the hard work you have done over the last year in the best light possible. That’s how to effectively prepare for tech performance reviews!

Happy Annual Review season!