How to write your year-end performance self-evaluation?

This article was originally published in “Vista Newsletter (opens in a new tab)” No.154

Hello, hello!

Yesterday was the last day of October. This week I gave several classes in a row, from the hotel guild speech, AI tutoring, to yesterday morning’s AI empowered academic writing workshop. In addition to lectures, what I put the most thought into this week is actually another thing: I started planning a new product line, and the first one was a year-end assessment manual (opens in a new tab) written for office workers.

As we enter the fourth quarter, many companies have started their year-end assessments. Some companies start urging employees to submit their annual performance self-evaluation (Self-Evaluation/Self-Assessment) in October, while others only submit it in November or December, followed by supervisor scoring and one-on-one interviews. The quality of the performance evaluation will naturally be linked to year-end bonuses, salary increases and promotions.

Therefore, I would like to use the space of this e-newsletter to talk to you about year-end performance self-evaluation, including: how performance evaluation is determined, how to write self-evaluation to help yourself, what AI can do in this matter, and what it absolutely should not do. Finally, I would like to share with you this new manual that has just been released.

That’s right! Even if your assessment season this year has passed, or you are your own boss and don’t need to submit a self-evaluation at all, the “writing results as evidence” mentioned later will still be useful when writing proposals, making closing reports, or negotiating contract renewals with clients.

Your annual performance self-evaluation has more than one real reader.

When many people write their annual performance self-evaluations, the readers they have in mind are their supervisors. This is certainly true, but it is only half true.

In many companies, after the direct supervisor scores the scores for his subordinates, there is another procedure: several supervisors sit together to compare the performance of their subordinates to see who should get an A and who should get a B. Some companies also have ranking ratio restrictions. This meeting is usually called a calibration meeting.

Most of the time, though, you won’t be in that conference room. Therefore, the only person who can speak for you is your supervisor, and the people he wants to persuade are other supervisors who don’t know you and don’t know what you have done this year.

Just imagine this. When your supervisor holds the performance self-evaluation you wrote and another supervisor asks him: “What did this colleague in your department do this year?” At this time, what sentence did he read out?

Well, this is the first thing I want you to remember: Although your performance self-evaluation does not require you to brag, you must also master some skills and write it into sentences that your supervisor can say and directly quote.

Next, let’s compare the two writing methods.

Before rewriting: “This year we actively promoted membership management and achieved good results.”

After rewriting: “The number of effective LINE friends has increased from 42,000 to 61,000, and the annual target is 60,000. Among them, the anniversary in May added 6,800 people in a single month, and about 4,100 people came from advertising during the same period.”

The first sentence is not wrong, but if the supervisor reads it out in a meeting, all he gets in return is “What then?” The second sentence can be read directly and can withstand questioning. You may have also noticed that in the second sentence, he took the initiative to explain that “part of it was brought about by advertising.” This is not weakening yourself, but protecting yourself. When your supervisor can answer questions when asked, he will dare to speak for you and even protect you.

The reason behind this is the same as what I discussed in “Workplace Writing Power Is Your Superpower”: Don’t just say what you want to say, say what the other party can use.

The performance appraisal is roughly finalized before you submit your annual performance self-evaluation.

The second thing is time.

Most people only bite the bullet and open the blank form a few days before the annual performance self-evaluation deadline. I anxiously flipped through my calendar, looked for weekly newspapers, and searched for previously sent letters. I couldn’t remember what I had done in March. What I could remember, I wasn’t sure if it was considered a result.

But if you know that your supervisor probably already has a rough ranking in mind before giving scores, you will naturally realize that it is actually a bit late to wait until you submit your performance self-evaluation before you start thinking about it.

Therefore, I suggest that you work backwards from the self-evaluation deadline and schedule the entire assessment season. If E represents the self-evaluation deadline and M represents the interview date, the arrangement can be roughly as follows:

• 30 days before E: Get the assessment form and understand the fields, scoring definitions and deadlines.
• E First 21 days: Meet with supervisor for 15 minutes, more details later.
• E The first 14 days to the first 7 days: Take stock of what you have done this year.
• E 7 days to 2 days before: Write a self-evaluation and check yourself.
• 3 days before the interview: Prepare what you will say for the interview.
• 1 day after interview: Send a confirmation letter.

In the first 30 days of E, there are several questions worth asking first. You can ask your HR or direct supervisor in advance:

• What are the fields in the self-evaluation form? Is there a word limit?
• How are the ratings defined? Is there a mandatory distribution ratio?
• Have the goals set at the beginning of the year been revised in the middle of the year? If it has been changed, find the changed version.
• Who will read your self-evaluation? Immediate supervisor, next-level supervisor, or committee?
• What is linked to performance appraisal? Year-end, salary increase, or promotion?
• Does the company have policies regarding the use of generative AI?

The last question is particularly important, and I will come back to it later when we talk about AI.

Inventory: First find the record for the entire year

The most common problem with writing an annual performance self-evaluation is not that you can’t write it, but that you can’t remember it.

A whole year’s worth of work can add up to a lot, scattered across calendars, weekly reports, messaging apps, and emails. I suggest that you don’t rush to write. First, take an hour to retrieve the records in these three places: the title of the calendar, the fragment of the weekly report, and the subject of the letter sent. Write one thing in a column, with the month and source of information next to it.

At this time, you will be surprised to find that even you have forgotten some things you have done.

For example, I designed a fictional character Wang ○○ in the manual, who works in marketing for an e-commerce company. When he took stock, he remembered that when he took over the e-newsletter from his resigned colleague in March, he consolidated 47 unused delivery lists into nine. In July, he assisted the customer service department to consolidate member-related FAQs from 62 to 28. Both of these things are not in his KPIs, and if there is no inventory, not a word will appear on the performance self-evaluation.

After taking inventory, compare everything to the goals you set at the beginning of the year. You will get two very useful lists:

The first one is “Goals without results,” and this is where you need to be prepared to explain them.

The second one is “results without goals”, such as being on duty, bringing in new people, and providing cross-department support. These are often the areas that are most often missed, but are most worth adding in a performance self-evaluation. The supervisor may not remember that you helped the customer service department, but if you write it down, he will have something to talk about.

Five principles for writing annual performance self-evaluation

After taking stock, I started to write. I have compiled five principles that can be applied directly without using AI.

First, the results are written at the front. Write what changed first, then what you did. What supervisors and other supervisors want to know most is the results, and the process can be added later.

Second, use language that your supervisor cares about. Executives typically care about revenue, costs, time, risk, and customers. So “organize FAQ” can be translated into “reduce repeated responses from customer service”, but only if you have evidence. Translation without evidence becomes packaging.

Third, make good use of numbers or verifiable facts. Not everything has a number. When there are no numbers, just write down verifiable facts: the number of times, the period, the output, and who can testify. For example, “taking care of an intern for six months” and “duty record for 12 weeks”. Never make up a ratio just to look good.

Fourth, make your role clear. The meanings of these four words, leading, being responsible, assisting, and participating, are very different. Write down the results completed by the team for which you are responsible. I designed another fictional character in the manual, engineer Li ○○. He originally wanted to write “leading in reducing cloud costs by 9%”, but after careful questioning, I found that 2% of it came from the purchase discount negotiated by the company and had nothing to do with him. If he writes the original sentence and is asked during the interview, it will be difficult to answer.

Fifth, write down the unachieved goals truthfully. By the way, this deserves a few words.

How to write about unachieved goals without making excuses

This is probably the most frustrating part of writing your annual performance self-evaluation. If you write too many reasons, it feels like you are shirk- ing; if you write too few, it feels like you are pleading guilty.

My suggestion is to write it in four paragraphs: gap, why, what you did, and next steps.

Take Wang ○○ as an example. One of his KPIs was to increase the membership repurchase rate from 18% to 21%, and finally reached 20.4%, which was a little bit worse. He knew that there would be a wave of competing product promotions starting in October, which might have an impact, but he had no data to prove how big the impact would be.

At this time, the most honest way to write it is: “There are competing product promotions during the same period, and there is no data on the impact.”

Hmm, does that sound a bit weak? Actually no. Your supervisor can see that you’re not leaving responsibility to external factors or making up numbers to make up the situation. Then write about what you have done and how you plan to make up for it next year. This paragraph will be complete.

Another fictional character, Zhang ○○, is the business director, with a department revenue achievement rate of 85%. He wanted to write that “Company K’s order has essentially been completed,” but the actual situation was that the other party had only signed a letter of intent and it had not yet become a formal order. A safer way to write it is “The letter of intent has been signed, but it has not yet become a formal order”, and then the month in which the order is expected to be placed is attached.

Writing down things that haven’t happened yet as results may help you gain half a grade in the short term, but if you’re questioned once, you’ll lose your supervisor’s trust. This price is much higher than a level.

After you finish writing, please read it over with two questions: If your supervisor reads it, will he think I am making excuses? Does it feel like I’m admitting guilt? If the answer to both questions is “no,” you can submit it.

What AI can and cannot help

At this point, you may ask: Can AI be used to write performance self-evaluations?

My answer is yes, but be very clear about its role.

AI is very suitable for these things: organizing the calendars and weekly reports you posted into a list of results; asking you one question at a time, asking for the results and evidence of each thing; being a picky supervisor, marking sentence by sentence where there is no evidence, where the tone exceeds the evidence, and where the team’s credit is written down as personal.

But there are a few things that I think AI should never do: make up for what you didn’t do; generate numbers you didn’t provide, including estimates such as “about”, “nearly” and “exceed”; give you self-ratings; and determine who deserves the credit.

The reason is simple. During the interview, your supervisor will question every sentence you write carefully. If the numbers are filled in by AI, you won’t be able to answer. Only you know what you did and where the evidence is.

Also, before posting any job information to AI, please do four things:

• Check the company regulations first. Many companies restrict or prohibit the posting of internal data into external AI services. If you can’t find it, ask your supervisor or information department.
• De-identification. Change the customer, manufacturer, and project code names to code names, and change the names of colleagues to professional titles. Do not post colleagues’ performance appraisals, salaries, or personal information.
• Keep the numbers only to yourself. For numbers that are company secrets, use ratios or indices instead.
• Use company-approved tools. Remember to turn off options such as “data used to improve models” in your personal account, but turning it off only reduces the reuse of data and does not mean it complies with company regulations.

Send you a prompt: let AI ask you questions

If you want to give it a try now, here’s a tip I simplified from the manual. The point is to let the AI ​​be the one asking the questions, not the one writing for you. You first paste the inventory of results (remember to de-identify) after the prompt word:

I am preparing for my year-end self-evaluation, and here is a list of my annual achievements. Please play my supervisor and help me find out the results and evidence of everything. 

Rules:
1. Ask me one question at a time and wait for my answer before asking the next question. 
2. Ask each thing in sequence: What is the result? Are there any numbers? Where is the evidence? Is this something I do alone or as a team? 
3. Don’t provide numerical options, and don’t estimate or extrapolate any numbers for me. 
4. If I can’t provide the evidence, mark [to be supplemented with evidence]; if I’m not sure about the credit, mark [to be confirmed]. 
5. Don’t add things that are not in the list, and don’t rewrite them as self-evaluations for me. 
6. After all the questions are asked, organize them into a table: events, results, numbers, sources of evidence, my role, and items to be completed. 

Here is a list of my achievements:

The third rule is particularly important. In order to help, AI can easily ask you thoughtfully, “Is it about 10% or 20%?” Once you choose it, the unsourced number becomes yours.

Before the interview, talk to your supervisor for 15 minutes

One final tip is a step that many people don’t think about, but it works well: Before handing in your performance self-evaluation, meet with your supervisor for 15 minutes.

The simple purpose is to let the supervisor know your arguments before the calibration meeting, rather than waiting until the day of the interview to hear them for the first time.

You can talk about three things in these 15 minutes: identify the two or three things that your supervisor values ​​most this year; describe the three results you plan to emphasize in the self-evaluation; and express your expectations for the evaluation. When talking about expectations, sentence pattern is very important. It is recommended to use “I think the basis is…” instead of “I should take…”. The former is providing evidence, the latter sounds like bargaining.

If your supervisor is very busy and cannot make an appointment, you can also send him a one-page summary: three achievements, one thing that has not been achieved, one focus for next year, and one piece of needed support, within 400 words.

On the day of the interview, listen to the supervisor’s comments and reasons before responding. If the rating is different than you expected, instead of arguing, ask two questions: “What’s the difference?” “What do you need to see to get to the next level?” Then write down the answers.

Within 24 hours after the interview, send a confirmation letter putting the conditions stated by the supervisor in writing. This time next year, this letter is your best starting point for taking stock.

If you want to know more about how the supervisor sees things, you can also refer to “Why can’t the person with the best performance be promoted to supervisor?” ](/blog/top-performer-cant-be-manager)〉 and 〈Review of “The Supervisor’s Strongest Work Technique”〉.

I designed this entire set of methods into a manual

What I mentioned above is part of the “Year-end Assessment Self-Assessment and Interview Package (opens in a new tab)” that I just put on the shelves this week.

The starting point for writing this manual was that I saw many professionals struggling with performance appraisals every year. Although I have not been an office worker for a long time, I still feel something about it. There are already many free self-assessment examples on the Internet that teach you how to fill in the fields; so what I want to do is what the free examples don’t include: a whole assessment season, plus a file that can be filled in directly.

The manual is divided into five modules and 19 steps, from understanding how performance appraisals are decided, arranging appraisal plans, taking stock of annual results, writing self-evaluations, making year-end report briefings, to how to talk before and after interviews, and how to track. Each step is first taught how to do it, so you can follow it without AI, and a reminder word is attached. The entire manual comes with 12 prompt words, and there are 7 additional steps that deliberately do not use AI, such as self-scores and interviews, because that is your judgment of yourself, and it is also a conversation between people.

In addition to the PDF manual, it also comes with an annual results inventory form (Excel), a self-evaluation form template (Word), a year-end report presentation template (PowerPoint), a one-page summary and interview preparation card, and a sample file filled out by three fictional characters.

These 12 prompts were tested on Claude using the final version. There were 31 dialogues in total, 30 of which passed all rules checks and 1 partially passed. During the test, I also deliberately asked the AI ​​to violate the rules 13 times, such as estimating numbers for me and incorporating other people’s contributions. It refused 13 times. However, I have only tested it on Claude, not ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot. This is also stated in the manual.

Depending on your current location, the usage is different:

• You haven’t submitted your performance self-evaluation yet: Start from the beginning and follow the order.
• Already submitted and waiting for interview: go directly to the part of the year-end report briefing and interview.
• This year’s assessment season is over: starting next Friday, spend five minutes writing down a column every week so you don’t have to start from a blank next year.

The official price is 1,599 yuan, the initial price is 1,199 yuan, and it is limited to the first 50 copies. You can also go to the Workplace Toolkit Section of the Digital Store to check out other manuals.

To be clear, this handbook does not guarantee any performance appraisal results. Ratings are judged by your company based on many factors and no one can guarantee them. What it can help you is to retrieve the results of the whole year, write a self-evaluation with a source for every sentence, and speak clearly during the interview.

Two recent little things

The first thing is that the countdown to the seven-day challenge camp at the end of November has begun. The camp will start on November 30th. You will receive a task letter every day. In seven days, you will make a small tool that you can use every day. You can put it on the Internet and get the URL without having to write a program. Registration ends on November 28th. For details, please see Introduction to the Seven-Day Challenge Camp.

Secondly, the new book “AI Unmanned Company” has entered the cover finalization stage. In the past two days, I asked everyone to help vote for the cover. The red one is currently more popular. Thank you to everyone who voted. I will share it with you after the decision is finalized. You are also welcome to leave a message telling me which version you like.

▲ Three cover candidates for “AI Unmanned Company”

Also, I just wrote a book review. Former “Wall Street Journal” technology reporter Joanna. Stern spent a whole year handing over health, transportation, housework and work to AI. What I want to take away most after reading are the three principles she set for herself. If you are interested, you can read “Book Review of “Live a Year Without Relying on Humans”>.

Finally, I would like to hear your experience and suggestions

When is the appraisal season at your company? When writing your annual performance self-evaluation, which paragraph makes you stuck the most? Or, have you ever met a supervisor who is very good at speaking up for his subordinates?

Feel free to tell me. Your valuable experience and suggestions will help me make the next version of this manual (opens in a new tab) better. If you have colleagues or friends who are worried about year-end performance self-evaluation, you are welcome to share this article with them, or invite them to subscribe to the “Vista Newsletter (opens in a new tab)”.

See you next time!

Vista