Using Performance Evaluations to Help Reach Your Career Goals

Many people want to advance in their careers such as earning more income and attaining higher level positions in their field or expertise. Through conversations with many employees at various companies, I’ve noticed that many go about achieving higher income and positions blindly. They take actions that they think will help them attain those goals and they don’t know what the companies or managers want to see in order to grant them the raise or promotion. This can lead to feelings of frustration and unappreciation for both the employees and for the supportive managers who want to see their employees succeed and advance. What’s missing are communication and actionable information.

Some people are fortunate to receive performance evaluations which clearly state what needs to be improved and what to do about it. In a perfect world this would always be the case. For many, performance evaluations are vague where it’s not clear what actions should be taken or what results need to be produced by the employee in order to earn a higher score on their next evaluation or earn a promotion. The requirements to qualify for the higher level position are not always volunteered to employees. Since we live in an imperfect world, it becomes the responsibility of the employee to communicate and to seek out the information that will be useful for earning higher income and positions.

If you have a manager who you trust and who wants you to succeed then it’s worth discussing your career goals and a plan to achieve them. If you have a manager who will feel threatened by your ambition or who you do not trust, then speaking to people outside of your company is a better option for gathering the information that you need. Speaking to people outside of your company can be useful even if you have a great manager because you will hear multiple perspectives and experiences from your field. It will help you understand what the industry wants instead of just what your company wants. This is especially useful if you plan to move to other companies at some point. The information that you need to gather through your conversations are the requirements to earn the pay raise or higher positions such as:

Once you have gathered the requirements to earn the higher income or position, you need to assess which requirements you already meet and which ones you need to work on. This is your starting point. You can refer to a recent performance evaluation or get feedback from a trusted manager as to where you stand with meeting the requirements.

The next step is to plan what you will do to meet the requirements such as the order of the activities that you will do, the timeline, and your budget (time, money, and other resources) that you will put towards this endeavour. If you are looking to advance within your company, your manager or others within your company at the level that you want to reach may have useful advice on what to do and in what order based on their experience and their knowledge of how the company works. It’s also useful to seek the advice of people outside of your company who have either already attained the position that you want or have surpassed it because they have practical experience. Not all of their input may be relevant to you especially if their work experience was a long time ago or in a different company culture however you may still get some useful insights that will be applicable to you.

Create an estimated timeline based on the budget of resources that you will allocate to upgrading yourself to meet the requirements for your goal. Choose a pace that is realistic for you.

The final steps are to schedule the time to work on meeting the requirements and to execute those actions. Blocking off time in your schedule reinforces that working towards your career advancement is important and helps prevent distractions and daily life from getting in the way. If you find that you keep putting off working on advancing your career for other tasks in life, then either it’s not really important to you or you need help such as an accountability partner or a structure that will support you in following through.

Periodically, you should measure your progress to see if you are on track or whether you need to adjust your plan. This includes periodically checking whether your industry has changed the requirements for the next level that you want to achieve, which means updating your plan or whether the requirements have stayed the same.