How to write a good self-review
A few weeks ago, I shared a few tips with my team on how to write a self-review effectively in the context of the yearly performance review. Then I thought, if I am going to share this with my team, why not share it with the world? :)
Before we start, I think it’s important to understand who will read your self-review. Most people think that their review will be read by their lead only. That’s only part of the story. Your review will be read by your lead, your manager, your VP, some HR folks as well as some other leads who may be called for an external opinion. That’s a lot of people. And while your lead may have a significant time budget to read your review, most others won’t. They will need your help to figure out your contributions.
With that in mind…
1. Think hard about what you did over the year. Dump all this in a file (ideally, you’ve tracked this throughout the year), then sort by impact. Then, keep the top deliveries and remove half-baked stories (their net contribution in a review is negative).
2. Make your review synthetic. A bloated two-page review does not serve you and can even come across as obnoxious. Don’t expect your readers to search for the needle in the haystack. They won’t.
3. Split your review into sections (of your own choosing, do whatever makes sense) and use bullet points inside those sections. Go light on links, they make your review verbose.
4. Be outcome-oriented, not output oriented. A new model is an output. What the model changed for the product is the outcome. Use numbers as much as you can.
5. Provide context with your reviews. Some of your readers may know little about your project. Explain why what you did is important. Don’t write a novel, but a few bits of context go a long way. Avoid jargon & acronyms as much as possible.
5. In case a piece of work was shared with others, be specific about what your actual contributions were, and don’t hesitate to mention/recognize the work of others.
6. Don’t worry about short self-reviews. Maybe you made a killing with just two projects that can be described in four lines each. That’s totally OK. But don’t forget important deliveries either!
7. Spend time on it. The 200 days you spent working on your projects deserve a few hours on your self-review. It’s usually a good thing to do it through multiple passes. Draft it on day 1, come back at it on day 2, etc. This will help you take some distance with your own writing.
