Episode 41: How to prep for performance reviews

I always believed that if you keep your head down and do good work, it will get noticed. The work will speak for itself and you’ll get promoted.

I was also always confused because the advice around promotions is often the exact opposite: “of you don’t market yourself how will people know what you did?”

When I tried marketing myself to my manager, I was told I need to stop chasing a promotion.

Part of the issue is I was trying to replicate what worked for other people without understanding the context of why that actually worked for them.

We just wrapped up performance reviews for Q3 and I got an 8% raise with additional stock. For the first time in my career, this wasn’t a surprise.

Here’s how I had been prepping:

Understand the process

Similar to how job interviews start with the first interaction, the promotion (or salary bump) conversation starts well before the performance cycle.

Before your next performance cycle, you should understand the promotion process.

Questions you should be able to answer:

1. Who does your manager have a conversation with? Their manager? Their peers? 

2. What do they care about? Qualitative data? Quantitative data? 

3. How often have you interacted with them? Will they say good things about you, neutral or negative? 

4. What does your manager care about? Where do they want you to improve? 

5. How does a promotion get approved? Who else weighs in and how many spots are there? 

A great place to start is talking to someone who recently got promoted (or a salary bump). Your coach/mentors are also great people to talk to about the process (assuming your manager doesn’t know or isn’t being helpful).

Have a clear goal / voice it often

People are motivated by different things and your interests are constantly evolving. Do you want to be a manager? Do you want to increase your salary? Do you want both?

Your manager may be willing to advocate for you, but they won’t if they don’t know what outcome you want.

For me, I constantly remind my manager that my goal is to stay an individual contributor and maximize my salary. If I hit a ceiling with my salary, then I care about my title otherwise it’s not relevant. Otherwise I want to enjoy my work and get paid based on the results I deliver.

In your next conversation (a quarter before your next review) tell your manager exactly what you are looking for. Be specific about:

• Become a people manager or stay an individual contributor

• Grow in your current role or take on a new one (your team or another)

• Your opinion on your strengths/weaknesses and what it will take to get there

Make it one-click easy

If someone asked you to do them a favor, you’d calculate how much time it’d take / what it would take away from (assuming it’s not a close friend of course).

Similarly, for your manager (or whoever is advocating for you) you need to make it as easy as one click. They open one doc with a) what you want, b) all the evidence to convince different people why you should get it, and c) all the details for the follow-up questions.

All of the research you did beforehand about the process and people involved comes into play here. Here’s a snapshot from my promo justification:

I track every customer call I’m on, the value of the deal, and anything I created related to the deal in a sheet. I link back to the specific snippet of the call where I am presenting so there is 0 ambiguity of what I did.

Here is a promo justification template you can start using:

You can’t control every aspect of the promotion - e.g., what your company has budgeted for, but you can still control (at least heavily influence) a lot of the process. It goes beyond “marketing yourself” and doesn’t have to involve comprising your authenticity.

If you need any help prepping for your next promo, feel free to reach out. The work starts 6-12 months before the actual promotion cycle begins.

As always, feedback is a gift and I welcome any/all feedback on this episode. See ya next week 👋 !

PS: It took me 3 hours to write, edit, and design this newsletter. If you liked today’s post, you can help me grow by forwarding it to one person with a quick “You’ll love this newsletter. Totally worth signing up.” They can subscribe below 👇️

✅ Find all resources here.

📆 Looking to connect? Find me on LinkedIn or grab some time on my cal here.

✨ Special thank you to Gigi Marquez who suggested I start this newsletter 🙏