How to Write a Self-Performance Review: Examples and Tips

Let’s face it, writing a self-assessment for your performance review can be challenging, especially if you have never written one before and if you’re uncomfortable tooting your own horn. It can be tricky to hit that right balance of recognizing your achievements without bragging or admitting your shortfalls without tearing yourself down. In this article, we show you some self-performance review examples and helpful tips for how to prepare for your self-evaluation and face your performance review with confidence.

What Is a Self-Assessment Performance Review?

A self-assessment performance review means that an employee undertakes a self-appraisal exercise ahead of their official performance review. This usually happens at least annually. Generally, you must submit your written self-evaluation as the starting point of your performance assessment and then discuss it with your manager at a scheduled meeting.

Your assessment should provide an honest analysis of your work throughout the year. This means highlighting your biggest accomplishments, as well as reflecting on what you could have done better and what you’d like to achieve by the time the next review comes around.

Why Do Performance Review Self-Assessments Matter?

If you’re tempted to book a one-way ticket to Bora Bora when the time comes to write your self-performance review, remember that a self-evaluation carries great benefits for both you as an employee as well as your manager.

Benefits of a Self-Performance Review: Examples for Employees

You have free reign to use your voice and talk about your experiences at work in your self-evaluation. Not only do you get to talk about what you’ve done well, but you also have a chance to request the support that you need. For example:

• A self-evaluation is the perfect time to showcase your achievements and build your case to ask for a raise or promotion or request what you need to guide your career in a specific direction. You might think your contributions to the team are obvious, but that’s not necessarily the case. Your boss can’t be everywhere at all times and has other employees and projects to be across. So, you have everything to gain from using your self-performance review to remind your busy manager what you achieved during the year.
• This is also your opportunity to do some healthy self-critiquing, which is one of the best ways to grow both professionally and personally. The more you do these exercises, the more you’ll also learn about how to ask the right questions. By pinpointing your weaknesses, you’ll recognize the areas in which you need to improve and be able to build a plan to overcome them with your manager.

Benefits of a Self-Performance Review: Examples for Managers

Managers don’t ask you to self-evaluate just to shirk responsibility, the exercise is a valuable chance for your boss to see things from your perspective. That way they can make a more accurate and measured assessment of your performance. The benefits from their side include:

• Gaining insight into the struggles you’re facing to help you solve them. This also helps them build a stronger and better-performing team, which is beneficial to the entire organization.
• Your boss can also gauge your opinions and take them into account to improve overall teamwork.
• And, they can understand better your motivations and aspirations and help you grow within the company.

How To Write a Self-Performance Review

Before diving into the self-evaluation for performance review examples and tips, let’s clarify what exactly goes into your self-appraisal.

What Should You Include in a Self-Evaluation?

Different companies rely on different self-assessment forms and formats. Most are somewhat structured but with open-ended questions, others use a series of statements with a numbered scale to rate the level of agreement. Or, in comment on a list of topics. However, the core subjects are almost always the same in each self-performance review. Examples include:

• strengths
• accomplishments
• areas for improvement
• goals

Some also enquire about specific skills such as:

• communication
• teamwork
• time management
• problem-solving
• leadership

Writing a Self-Evaluation for Performance Review: Examples of Templates

Below are two self-performance review examples as they are presented to employees:

Template 1

• Self-Assessment Employee Form
• Employee Name:
• Employee Position/Title:
• Department:
• Review Period:
• Date:

Current Responsibilities:

Results Delivered:

Core Strengths:

Areas for Growth:

Performance Goals:

Additional Comments:

Employee’s Signature:

 

Template 2

• Self-Assessment Employee Form
• Employee Name:
• Employee Position/Title:
• Department:
• Review Period:
• Date:

Responsibilities

• Is your job description still accurate?
• Are there responsibilities you took on that are not in your current job description?
• Are there tasks in your job that you wish you could do less or more of?

Accomplishments

• List your contributions and achievements for this review period.

Strengths

• What are your strengths and how do you use them in your current role? Do you have any other skills you feel you aren’t fully utilizing in your current role?

Areas to Address

• What areas do you need further development in?

Goals

• What goals do you wish to achieve during the next year?
• Are there additional skills or knowledge you’d like to have help with to perform your role better?

List any other subject you’d like to discuss during your performance evaluation meeting.

Writing a Performance Review for Yourself: Examples of Phrases to Include

Now that you’re clear on the kind of documents you could be presented with and the topics you’ll have to touch upon, here are a few self-performance review examples phrases to take inspiration from:

Strengths:

• “I deliver consistent and up to the standards results. During the past year, I was able to address 95% of customer queries within 24 hours.”
• “I am confident in my leadership skills. Since September I took charge of 40% of the new projects assigned to our team.”
• “I take effective approaches with clients, colleagues, and company partners thanks to my interpersonal and communication skills.”

Accomplishments:

• “Since my last performance review, I have been able to increase customer retention of my assigned clients by 50% through negotiating discounts not exceeding 15% of the total price.”
• “This year I outperformed my KPIs by 5%. This meant increasing the company revenue by $500,000.”
• “Since last year, I went through our order packaging process, and with a few changes I was able to reduce returns due to damaged packages by 75%.”

Areas to improve:

• “I struggle when it comes to delegating. As a result, I end up overworked with reduced overall productivity.”
• “I struggle to multitask effectively. To solve the issue, I plan to organize to-do lists and allocate time blocks for each task to be able to fully dedicate my attention to one thing at a time”.
• “After reflecting on my performance, I recognized that my presentation skills need improvement. I can handle communication with small groups but get overwhelmed with larger crowds. To work on this skill, I’d like to volunteer to hold at least one of our team meeting presentations every month.”

Goals:

• “I value and regularly seek opportunities to learn something new. That’s why this year I’d like to attend at least one networking event with my industry peers per quarter to stay on top of the latest trends.”
• “By the end of the year, I plan to complete four trainings in cross-selling and upselling to improve my performance.”
• “Moving forward I will consciously work on delegation to help me focus on my targets.
• “In the following year, I’d like to take end-to-end ownership of at least one project per quarter.”

Self-Appraisal Tips for the Win

Along with our self-performance review examples, take a look at the following tips to help you write a really persuasive self-appraisal:

1. Self-Assess All Year Round

One way to do this is to encourage regular meetings with your manager. In doing so you’ll avoid the recency bias, which overemphasizes recent events above the big picture. As a result, you’ll get a more accurate and fair evaluation. Plus, you’ll also acquire the habit of keeping track of your performance frequently, for instance by setting aside your successes in an email folder.

2. Keep it Professional

As you saw in our self-performance review examples, every comment in your evaluation must stay professional. This is the case for positive appreciation as much as in the case of constructive feedback towards your company or your boss. To avoid any shortcomings use the STAR method with the same principles you would use in an interview. To do this, present the situation, the tasks involved, your actions, and the result, without any additional frills. You’ll come out appearing assertive and unbiased.

3. Focus on the Hard Facts and Numbers

What is more impartial than numbers and facts? In resumes, just like in self-assessments, metrics in the form of dollars saved and increased percentages are some of the most powerful tools to showcase your value to a company. Make sure to include them in your appraisal, especially in the accomplishments and key strengths sections.

4. Keep it Short

Perhaps after learning all the tips and tricks from our self-performance review examples, you can’t wait to write your self-assessment and feel tempted to add as much as possible. Remember, however, that a self-evaluation shouldn’t be excessively long to be effective. A page should be enough to deliver your considerations in orderly bullet points.

Put Our Self-Performance Review Examples to Work in Your Next Job

When you find the right-fit company for you, a performance review self-assessment is less stress and more of an opportunity. Find a job that checks all your boxes with help from Monster. Create a free candidate account and upload your resume today. Take advantage of the customized job alerts and receive all the latest openings matching your profile straight to your inbox. Plus, discover more companies and recruiters hiring in your sector.