End of Year Reviews: The Employee Guide to Self-Reflections

Going through a review process for the first time at a company can be daunting, but it’s really just a time to reflect on the year and set yourself up for your future goals.

There are so many elements when it comes to performance reviews.

In today’s column, I’m going to focus on the self-reflection portion of your annual review. Specifically, I'll share advice on getting really clear on how you can articulate your impact. 

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Welcome to Ask a Coach. I’m Marnie, a Career Contessa Coach. In this advice column, I’ll answer the most common questions we get in career coaching sessions here at Career Contessa. 

Topics will range from job search tactics and negotiations to career development and career fulfillment. Have a burning question you want to see answered? Send it my way! Looking to have a coaching session of your own? Check out our rockstar list of coaches. 

What is an End of Year Review?

End-of-year reviews look different at each company, but the ultimate goal is to assess an employee’s overall performance during the past year.

Ideally, this is an opportunity for you and your boss to have an open conversation on how you’re performing—both in terms of successes and growth opportunities. If your company uses annual reviews to determine promotion readiness or salary increases, the review process can be equal parts exciting and nerve-wracking. 

Why You Need a Self-Reflection 

While your manager will often lead the review conversation, no one knows your contributions better than you. A review is your opportunity to make your voice heard and remind your manager of all the amazing things you’ve accomplished this year. If you struggle to get constructive feedback, a review is also a great time to ask for tangible ways to continue growing within your role. 

Most companies have an opportunity for a formal self-assessment as part of the larger review process. If your company doesn’t have this step, simply let your manager know you’d like to compile your own reflections and share them ahead of the review conversation as part of your personal development.

Whether a self-evaluation is a required step at your company or not, the act of compiling your own review is a worthwhile effort. Outside of a promotion or raise at this exact moment, many companies will reference past reviews as part of future promotion requests or to onboard new people managers.

For your growth beyond the company, your review can be an invaluable snapshot of the specific moment in your career. I’ve personally used my performance write-ups to inform which positive feedback I should list on my resume for a given role and how I speak to that role in future job interviews.

Writing a Self-Reflection: Sharing Your Accomplishments 

I recently heard Adam Grant talk about the difference between “self-promotion” and “idea promotion” on Jay Shetty’s podcast. The concept is that when you share an idea, you're really just putting the idea out there, not yourself as a person.

 

Grant explained how this delineation could be used to combat any weird feelings about self-promotion or what we tend to think of as "showy." This same principle applies to how you think about your wins at work. If self-promotion makes you queasy, think of it as “impact promotion” – you’re simply sharing your various impacts on the business within the past twelve months.

Here’s how to identify your key accomplishments.

1. Quantify Your Individual Overperformance

If you’re in a role where you’re measured against a quota or some kind of goal, you’re in an easier place than most when it comes to quantifying your impact. Look at your role-specific monthly or quarterly goals throughout the year and reflect on your accomplishments. 

Whenever possible, outline your specific examples in a percentage format.

2. Gather Your Team Achievements 

For anyone who doesn’t have metrics tied to their goals, a helpful next place to look is your team’s achievements. As you reflect on the year, try to identify team-level wins celebrated throughout the year. 

For example, if you’re on the marketing team and there was a massive effort to re-brand the company website, which behavior of yours can be tied back to the win? Did you lead the brainstorming sessions to determine the new color scheme, or did you lighten your team members' workload as they dealt with the volume of updates?

These efforts (or the infinite number of other ways you could have contributed to such a large project) are valid and worthwhile accomplishments to list in your review. The biggest mistake I see people make is doubting accomplishments because they don’t have a large metric tied to them, and while data is helpful wherever possible, you can’t make up numbers if your role simply isn’t numbers-based. 

3. Reflect on Peer Compliments 

This is my favorite method for thinking about achievements because compliments are often overlooked. 

If your colleagues compliment your work, and you’re hearing the same type of compliment multiple times, odds are the compliment is tied to one of your work superpowers. Reflect on times when co-workers have said something kind to you at work and see if it’s tied to a larger accomplishment. If you don’t have a smile file already set up at work, let this be your inspiration to start one! 

This same method can also be used with requests for help. If your co-workers are coming to you for help on problem-solving a tough client issue, there’s a good chance that you have strong client management skills.

Whether it’s a big win or a small anecdotal story, it can be a helpful addition to your review. 

4. Explore Your General Strengths 

If you’re still looking for additional ways you’ve made an impact, a final place to look may be your general strengths. If you’ve been doing your job for a while, your strengths may be obvious to you, but if you’re unsure where you shine, you can use an online assessment to help you (my personal favorite is CareerFitter).

Once you’ve identified your strengths, you’ll want to go one level deeper and think backward to determine if your strengths have led to any notable work achievements.

Picture These Scenarios: 

Whether it’s big or seemingly small, a win due to one of your key strengths helps reinforce what makes you a uniquely strong team member. 

Writing a Self-Reflection: Identifying Your Growth Areas

Equally as important as nailing your accomplishments is nailing your growth areas. It shows a level of self-awareness and humility to have a clear grasp on where you can continue to grow.

The more specific you are when it comes to your growth areas, the better. This shows that you’re already thinking about improvements in a deep way. As you think through where you have the biggest growth potential, try to hone in on what there is to improve. From there, plan to make the improvement.

Proposing a developed plan demonstrates that you are solutions-oriented, eager to set new goals, and see a clear path to your next step. 

Here are a few ideas for identifying your growth areas. 

1. Explore Your Current Challenges 

If something is causing confusion or “swirl “(corporate jargon alert) in your day-to-day role, it may be a good place to start thinking about improvement opportunities. This can be anything from manually formatting tricky reports to confronting upset clients.

There’s going to be inherently challenging aspects of any role, but if there’s something you’ve noticed you tend to struggle with more than your peers do, it’s most likely a growth area. 

It can feel vulnerable to expose something that you think should be easier. However, it shows a lot of honesty and accountability if you can get ahead of future issues by addressing them on your own accord.

If the challenge is something your manager has noted to you, once or multiple times, it’s extra important to address the “elephant in the room,” as you’ll want to be clear about how you can improve moving forward.

I want to clarify here that there’s nothing wrong with these true improvement areas. We all have weaknesses, and they don’t make you bad at your job; they simply make you human. 

2. Imagine Your Future Responsibilities 

Another helpful thought starter is to reflect on what a new responsibility will look like after your next promotion. The promotion doesn’t need to be happening now for this to be relevant, I would actually argue it’s an even more effective strategy if you’re not gunning for a promotion just yet.

This strategy aims to clarify what you will need to do in the future and then volunteer to start working up to those responsibilities in the short term.

If you aren’t managing people in your current role, but would like to be a people manager in the future, this is a great way to start identifying leadership opportunities you can take on now. 

For example, if your company has a new hire buddy program one of your growth areas may be to volunteer to be a new hire buddy as a way to foster your mentorship skills. This works for progression into roles that are a less stark transition too.

If you’re an engineer at one level and you’re trying to get to your next level within the year, identify a skill or experience you don’t currently have that you can acquire to make your case for promotion more compelling when the time comes. 

3. Plan for Learning Opportunities 

This is where you can really lean into being resourceful about your career aspirations. Thinking about your personal goals regarding career growth, like signing up for workshops or training programs, is a great way to close out your list of growth ideas. I’ve also had clients use this time to inquire about company support for a learning-specific activity, like asking for tuition support on an online course.

Ideally, these opportunities aren’t standing alone in your review but are actually connected to one of the current challenges or future responsibilities you've already outlined.

Another great way to learn is through mentors, which you can ask about during reviews. I personally like asking your manager who they think you should connect with from a career advancement perspective.

Indeed gave this tip in their extensive article on year-end reviews at the start of the year, and it continues to hold true. No one succeeds in a silo. the sooner you can build a team of supportive mentors, the quicker you’ll be able to achieve new levels of success.

Until Next Time! 

We like to keep these (relatively) short and sweet, so I’m going to wrap this week’s column here. If you are craving more review-specific tips, send me a note and let me know what you would want to learn about in a follow-up article.

Remember that a review is just a snapshot of your year, and doesn’t define your whole career—so while you want to give it the time it deserves, it shouldn't be something that keeps you up at night. If you’re looking for extra guidance as you go through the performance review process, you can work with me or one of my fellow coaches here.