Performance Review

[Rudey]

http://content.monstertrak.monster.c...b/firstreview/

Prove Yourself Again with Your First Performance Review
by Peter Vogt
MonsterTRAK Career Coach




You did so well in your recent job interviews with Company X that you got the entry-level position you really wanted. But your days of having to prove your value to the company are just beginning.

In a few months or perhaps even a year from now, you'll be asked to demonstrate your worth again to your supervisor during your first performance review.

Granted, your review probably won't carry the same make-or-break pressure as your job interview. But it will still have a significant impact on your future assignments, work relationships, day-to-day activities and salary. So you need to be as ready for your review as you were for all those interviews. And that means preparing for it from day one.

"The key to a successful performance review is what happens during the three, six or 12 months before the meeting," says Gene Mage, president of Making It Work, a Horseheads, New York-based leadership development and consulting firm. That's the time when your working relationship with your boss will be crystallized -- or not.

But here's the hard part: In many ways, forging that solid relationship will be up to you, says Sherry Cornwell, a selection specialist and strategic business partner for Medica, a Minneapolis-based health insurance company.

"I say this because there are many organizations and managers who do not take the lead in on-boarding their new employees," Cornwell says. "In the end, it's the employee's primary responsibility not to wait for information to be given to them, but to be proactive."

In other words, sooner rather than later, you need to clarify your role and your boss's expectations of you to determine how you'll eventually be assessed at your performance review. Do you have individual goals you need to achieve? Company goals?

When your review is only a few weeks or days away, you must become more concrete by completing tasks like these (read more at link above):

-Rudey

[Optimist Prime]

I'm 100% productive. I had one email to send and I sent it.




p.s.
Thanks for this thread it is a valueble resource to young working professionals

[navane]

Thanks, Rudey, for the helpful link!

I just started a new job 4-weeks ago and I began building my performance appraisal "arsenal" my very first week. This is the first "proper" job I've had since leaving grad school and I am very motivated to move upward.

Here's how I approach things: I created a spreadsheet to track what I do week by week. There are four main tasks I have to address on a daily basis. Quite literally, I make a note of how many of each document pass through my hands everyday and enter the summary into my spreadsheet on Fridays. In addition, I have already developed a new brochure for the office and created a new form to streamline office procedures. I note those special projects on the speadsheet too, along with keeping copies of my creations in my filing cabinet.

I know it sounds anal-retentitve to track my work like this; but you better believe that, when I bust out a portfolio of my work during my first performance review, that there will be no question as to what I have accomplished! In this way, I can tell them exactly how well I've been doing. For example, I can show them that I had been processing 25 student organizations a week. Then, after developing a new tracking system, I was able to process 30% more applications. That type of stuff.

I wasn't their first choice candidate, but I got the job when the first person turned it down. So, now I'm going to show them how dumb it was that they didn't offer me the job in the first place. LOL

.....Kelly