Re: Annual Self Appraisal forms and all this (censored)

This isn't crap. This is an important part of managing your career. These are questions you, as a professional in the 21st century, should be asking yourself anyway. Know that your bosses are asking themselves the same questions about you and giving you the opportunity to toot your horn. They are constantly evaluating the question "Does this person provide adequate value to the company for what he's costing us?" Do not squander this opportunity.

Let's look at what they ask.

Using your objectives established for the prior year, summarize the results you achieved for each. Which objectives did you meet, exceed, or fall short on?

Translation: Did he do what he said he was going to do?

2. What additional accomplishments did you achieve during the past year?

Translation: If we forgot anything about how you provide value to the company, now is your chance to tell us what it is.

3. What do you feel are your major strengths in your role? How can your strengths be further leveraged?
4. In what areas do you feel you need to further develop? How can your manager help?

Translation: We want to get more value out of you. Help us do that.

A job is not a situation where you get the job, and you're set for life. You and the company have a relationship. You need to provide adequate value to the company. The company must provide value to you, in the terms of money, interesting work, a good place to work, etc. Either party is free to terminate the relationship, so it's in the best interest of both to get as much out of it as possible.

Just as you evaluate the company to decide "Do I want to work here or go somewhere else", the company asks "Do I want this guy, or should we get someone else." You need to ask yourself if you're providing as much as possible, because if not, it means less money, or a loss of a job, because someone else will come along who does it better.

xoxo,
Andy

Comment on Re: Annual Self Appraisal forms and all this (censored)

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Re^2: Annual Self Appraisal forms and all this (censored) by Aristotle (Chancellor) on Jan 20, 2005 at 12:50 UTC
That's a nice way to look at it for oneself, but not a good strategy for filling it out for bosses. All advice I've seen about self-evalution requests so far suggests that you should say zilch about failures and pile the praise on yourself wherever remotely possible. You were tasked with creating part of your own paper trail, and you don't want it to contain anything that could be used against you at later opportunities. (This assumes a large corporate setting. I'm not sure why it would require a formal piece of dead tree to communicate about these things in a small shop with flat structures and good relations.) Makeshifts last the longest.	[reply]
Re^2: Annual Self Appraisal forms and all this (censored) by ww (Archbishop) on Jan 19, 2005 at 18:25 UTC
Andy: ...Opinion only, but I really do think you put too much stock in the subject self-evaluations. Perhaps, somewhere, and maybe even somewhere this side of utopia, there is an employer who operates as you've outlined... But IME, these time-wasters are relegated directly (do not pass GO, do not collect $200) to a file cabinet. (Sometimes the cabinet is a round one, if the manager in question feels confident the HR staff or consultant types won't be checking on followup, once they've established that the manager has gotten the self-eval box "checked.")	[reply]
Re^3: Annual Self Appraisal forms and all this (censored) by petdance (Parson) on Jan 20, 2005 at 15:54 UTC
Perhaps, somewhere, and maybe even somewhere this side of utopia, there is an employer who operates as you've outlined... Starting with my company, in my department, working for me. (And if anyone's interested, the job listing is at http://jobs.perl.org/job/1560) these time-wasters are relegated directly (do not pass GO, do not collect $200) to a file cabinet. Then that sounds like a pretty crappy company and one worth leaving. Life's too short to work shitty jobs for shitty employers who make you do shitty stuff. xoxo, Andy	[reply]


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