11 Self Appraisal Ideas To Spur Your Career Growth

Purpose of this article is to provide some inputs on the self appraisal or self evaulation process that most people working for corporate organizations need to go through every year. One common issue that people face every year is that they struggle to collect evidences and articulate their achievements to support their performance over the year. Because they are not able to provide the right inputs, they fail to get good ratings and eventually fall on the losing side.

In this post we will share some great self appraisal ideas which will help you in the self appraisal process.

• First things first, understand the KRAs in details. KRAs are the key result areas set for you at the begnning of the year or at the beginning of the project(in case you move to a new project or new deparment). Your performance over the year is measured against the KRAs. It is absolutely necessary to understand the key result areas(KRAs) along with explicit and implicit requirements at the beginning of the year.
• Understand the measures within each KRA, that is, how exactly performance will be measured. For example, if your KRA is to improve customer satisfaction score then you should know the measure in terms of the exact CSAT score that you are suppose to gain, it may be 4 on a scale of 5 or 8 on a scale of 10 depending on your organization process and policy.
• Also understand how will the data be collected for these measures, so in case of the KRA for csat score you need to know how the csat score is calculated and where is it stored and retrieved
• Understand the rating system properly, know exactly what is required to gain a certain rating, for example, on a scale of 5, if 5 is the best, then you should know what exactly should be done to gain a rating of 4/5 or 5/5
• Track your work on a regular basis, create a folder to store relevant emails and documents
• Track the critical incidents, these are occassions when you have done something really extraordinary by going outside the call of your duty. For example, working on a weekend or working late in the night to take care of emergency situations
• Be rational of your own work, don't rate yourself 5/5 just because you think that you have done a great job or because your friend always claims to do so. Always attach the right evidences to support your claim
• Don't worry too much about what your colleagues are filling in their self appraisals. A casual discussion to gain some idea is fine but if you get worried about your peer or start copying him/ her then you lose your originality and fail to highlight the hardwork you have done througout the year
• Quantification of achievements is also a very important aspect. When you provide highlights of your work done in the past don't forget to include the right numbers/ figures. These are facts that will help you build a strong business case for your growth/ promotion
• During the discussion with your supervisor/ manager be sure to put forth your points positively, be ready and open to receive critical feedback and provide inputs/ feedback for the betterment of the project/ organization
• Remember, self appraisal is not only an opportunity for you to showcase/ present the work you have done in the past year but it is also an opportunity for you to identify and grab opportunities for the future.

Having mentioned the above points, the last and most important point is that one should take the self evaulation/ self appraisal process as an opportunity to look within oneself and find out the strenghts and weakness. On some occassions some peers/ colleagues may attempt to discourage others by talking negatively about the process, we should be careful about such people and safely ignore their advice. Self appraisal/ self evaluation is a very importance process just not for work/ employment but also in general for your life. To conclude here is a quote: 'We are accountable for our career and life, so we have to be responsible for our righteous self appraisal - NOT our boss and NOT our company'.

If you read the above, you would definitely want to read 21 Real Reasons Why Some People Get Promoted While Others Don't

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