Annual Reviews
It’s one of the most important task people in large organizations need to do. But often we don’t spend enough effort and thought compared with the importance of annual reviews to their careers
Most People Hate Reviews
I’ve been doing my self review for over 12 years now at Yahoo! For the first few years, it was a chore and I didn’t spend quality time working on getting peer reviews and writing self reviews. For the last few years, I’m using the following system and it seems to be working well.
Getting Ready, Way Ahead Of Time
At the beginning of year, I’ve already try to imagine my end of the year review and what I want it to say. Given I have planned ahead, I already have some idea of the responsibilities I want to take on, the things I do not want to take on. I create a note for myself call ‘Annual Review Forecast 2011’
Throughout the year, if I get emails/praise from people, I write it down using Evernote into a note named ‘Annual Review 2011 : praise’, these are the people I’ll use during my peer review feedback when I wanted positive feedback.
Who To Ask For Feedback?
I have a saved search in my email that looks for all emails I ‘Sent’ in the last year or 6 months, depending on if it’s mid-year check in or full year. Then I look at who I sent the most emails to and make a decision whether that person is a good peer reviewer and include that person in my reviewer list. For Outlook, you can look at the ‘Sent’ folder and sort by ‘To” and scan that list for people who you have interacted frequently for potential names.
View -> Arrange By -> To:
View ->Arrange By -> Collapse All Groups
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