DO YOUR OWN MID-YEAR REVIEW

If you started a new job early this year, you’re almost at the mid-year mark and there are only six more months to go for the rest of the year. A lot of companies will be having their reviews around this time but for someone who just started, you may find that your time at the company isn’t long enough to warrant a review with your boss. Or perhaps your company does reviews only at the end of year?

Whatever the case, it doesn’t hurt for you to conduct a review on your own. Doing a mid-year review yourself is helpful to ensure your objectives are on track and you recognise the areas that may need extra work so when it comes to your real evaluation, you have it all in place to impress your boss. Plus, your own mid-year review serves as a reminder or motivation to do better in furthering your career goals.

How do you conduct a review yourself? Here are some ideas:

#1 List down your career goals
And then compare where you are right now in terms of achieving them. Obviously, if one of your career goals is to be CEO, that’s not going to happen any time soon. But are you paving the way to one day achieve it though? That’s how you would conduct your own review – to see how far you’ve come and what else you need to do to slowly but surely get there.

#2 Assess your wins and losses
You have to be honest with yourself on this – write down what you think are some achievements you’ve achieved and in another column beside it, write down your losses. Compare both to see if you’ve had more wins or losses in the past six months. If you’ve had more wins, it doesn’t mean it’s time to take a chill pill; instead being able to see how much you’ve accomplished should motivate you to do even better! But if you’ve had more losses, don’t feel dejected. Think back of why these were losses and how you could have improved on them.

#3 Think of all the projects you’ve done
Then list down the actions you’ve taken and the results you’ve achieved by doing them. This will be a way for you to show how valuable you are to the company and what your progress is so far. You will also be able to identify the challenges you’ve had to overcome to complete these projects and then learn how you managed to do so in order to meet your goals.

#4 Compare it to your last review
If you’ve been with the company for a while and have had a prior review, use that as a benchmark to see if you’ve improved. In your previous review, your boss would have noted on the things you should work on (maybe your communication and leadership skills?). Now, think of whether you’ve actually worked on improving them by now. Be honest in figuring out how much improvement you’ve made and if not, why not? List down an action plan on how you want to meet these goals so that when it comes to your actual review in the future, you can prove to your boss you’ve done your homework.

#5 Finally, write what you hope to complete before your actual review!
It’s not a review if you don’t have some things you want to accomplish. Your mid-year review should be an evaluation of how far you’ve come... and then a target on what else you need to achieve. Don’t just think of the past; think of the future too. Set realistic targets and how you plan to achieve them. From time to time, check back with your personal review to see if you’ve made any progress at all.

Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash