I don’t even remember writing my first self-review at my first job lol.

I considered it just another part of corporate grind, and felt had little to no influence on the outcomes anyways.

“Don’t you see how amazing I am? I will get promoted when it’s my turn!”

Performance reviews at a company are a necessity. It’s a tool to give and take feedback, and gauge the distance between where you are now and the next level.

It’s a system designed to scale well, to stay consistent across orgs and reduce biases.

And if you treat that system as a block box over which you have no control or influence — you miss out on opportunities.

So here are few things I have learned, and I wish I knew when I didn’t bother with that first review cycle.

⭐️ Write a stellar self-assessment

At my second company, it was a little more start-upy and you had to make these promotion packs for yourself. It had to include samples of work you have done, their impact, some words from your colleagues, your next year goals, what you have done outside work like talk/blogs — all packaged very nicely in a curated visually aesthetic deck.

Now this sounds like a lot of work, and it was a lot of work — but it was also a lot of team work. All of us in the design team genuinely enjoyed sharing words, taking inspiration from each other decks and genuinely feeling proud of the work we did.

I think this is where the shift happened for me. From self-reviews being a drab, long essay of all the things I did — to a curated overview of the work I did, teams I was part of, challenges and future hopes.

Tell stories, make a case. Don’t keep it drab. Will love to write about this more in detail in future, follow along.

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💛 Your manager is your biggest ally.

Sucks if you don’t like your manager — but equally brilliant if you do. Your manager is your biggest ally in the evaluation process. They are in rooms/zooms you aren’t, and vouching for you.

Do your managers a solid by writing a fab self-review. While as your manager, they know of all the work you do and can fill up the gaps pretty well — but save their time and energy to further solidy your case, rather than digging through docs and figmas.

Plus, no one knows your work or your career goals bette than you do. Own your narrative and put in the work.

😅 Get curious instead of defensive.

Part of review cycles is getting feedback, and sometimes they are not the things you want to hear.

If you have a good culture and a good manager, nothing should come as a surprise in the reviews.

If there is unexpected feedback, try to take it more objectively.

For eg, if a feedback is around you haven’t been transparent with deliverable timelines. Instead of going “I do this and this and this”

Frame it like “I have been doing this, do you have other suggestions? What are some tweaks I can make? How can I make sure I am acting on this piece of feedback?”

It takes a bit of EQ to navigate situations like these, but you got this. Deep breaths.

👀 Recognize patterns in feedback.

If you received 2–3 cycles of constructive feedback, you will get some patterns.

For me, for the first two years I always received some version of — speak up more/ be more assertive/ push for design.

I tried sweeping it under the rug because

1. Hey I speak up. Hey I push for design.
2. It was uncomfortable.

Over time, I started finding ways to “fix it”. Asked all my managers/seniors what can I do. I found out some of the women I look up to like Chloe bro and Julie Zhuo and Deb Liu have had similar patterns of feedback they received.

Over time, I realized it’s not a weakness. But a work-in-progress area.

I will write about it more in detail in coming blogs, but for now. If you are seeing clear patterns, find ways to proactively deal with them.

🔮 Visualize your next performance review.

…and set yourself up for success.

Have written agreed goals with your manager. Have regular checkpoints baked in your calendar. I have a monthly one.

No system or company or team is perfect. There is unintentional biases in the system, and often it can feel very opaque as an IC/ junior.

Optimize the factors you can optimize and be the best advocate for yourself.

Shh what do I hear? Imposter syndrome? Let’s talk about it in our future chats.

Hope this helped. Chhavi x

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