Tag: Performance Review

What to Expect When You’re Not Expecting

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Awkward: The word that best describes the time period between a coworker’s dismissal and his departure. Even if it’s someone you don’t like, you wouldn’t wish job loss on anyone. Restructuring happens. Downsizing happens. Finding out someone’s role is eliminated makes you realize it can happen to you. It’s scary. It makes it hard to concentrate and do your job well. Not doing your job well puts you in danger of losing it, creating a vicious circle. You can’t control the corporate machine, but here are some things you can control:

The Obvious – Google what current resumes look like. If you haven’t had to search for a job for a few years, you may be in for a rude awakening. Employers want the story of your career in numbers, so you need to quantify yourself: How much revenue do you generate for your company? How much time have you saved your company through process improvement? Quantifying your job performance in percentages can be tricky if you are in an administrative role. You may have to get a bit creative. Can you quantify how much time you saved your supervisor? Can you quantify how much money you saved the company through frugal purchasing? You no longer have to put every job you ever held on your resume. Hiring managers only want to see your experience relevant to the job they need to fill. So, first create a master resume with every job you’ve ever had including dates, supervisors’ names and titles, the previously mentioned quantified percentages, referrals and contact information. Then, revisit it every six months to update any outdated information. If it becomes necessary for you to apply for a job, you can easily cherry pick the relevant experience from this document and create a fresh resume tailored specifically to the job for which you are applying.
Don’t forget the cover letter. Plenty of job coaches are on the fence about whether or not the cover letter is dead, but most agree it doesn’t hurt your chances if you send one. Polish yours, then save it as a template. Make it a marketing piece that tempts a hiring manager to read your resume. Hopefully, you won’t need it for a while, so leave notes for yourself in it. For example: include several ways to contact you; at least your email address and phone number in the signature block. Leave a note to yourself in the greeting to go to LinkedIn and find out the hiring manager’s name. In the body, leave a note to yourself to choose three key phrases from the job description then give examples of how your experience fills those needs using the quantifying percentages from your master resume. If you unexpectedly lose your job, just having a foundation to build on can calm your panic.

The Not so Obvious – Get on a job posting website and check out positions that interest you and companies at which you’d like to work. Check out the job descriptions. Do you have the skills to do the jobs that interest you ? If you don’t, go get them. With Massive Online Open Courses (MOOL), there’s no excuse not to have up to date skills. And yes, I’m putting my money where my mouth is (or where my fingers are, in this case). I took an online Introduction to Financial Accounting class from The Wharton School of Business through a MOOL. It’s not only on my resume, but also on my performance review.
Join LinkedIn. Do more than fill out your profile and upload a picture. If you need advice on how to use LinkedIn, search your public library’s database for a how-to book and check it out. While you wait for the book, read this article: https://www.themuse.com/advice/9-surefire-ways-to-boost-your-linkedin-profile-when-you-only-have-10-minutes
Network. This can solidify your current position as well as help you make connections in case you need to quickly find out who is hiring. Does your employer participate in networking groups?  Wrangle an invitation or offer to manage your company’s table at the next event. You can pass out business cards and collect them for your own future use while simultaneously promoting your company. And don’t forget to follow up with new contacts on LinkedIn.
Do you know someone who has suffered job loss and bounced back into a new position? Buy her a cup of coffee and ask how she did it. Most people like telling their stories and smart people listen. Ask if in hindsight she knew the elimination was coming, what would she have done to prepare? When she gives you suggestions, do them.

Get a Side Gig – Take on an additional (part time) job, or a find a side hustle. At the very least, you’ll feel like you have some control over your destiny, and you’ll have a bit of income to fall back on if the worst happens. If the worst doesn’t happen, you’ll have a little extra cash; which leads me to my next point…

Save Your Money – This is not the time to purchase luxuries. Take this opportunity to pay down debt. Every month make an extra payment on your: car, credit card, student loan, mortgage (Get the idea?). Being debt free gives you so many options and peace of mind. No debt? Congratulations! Put the earnings from your side gig in your IRA. You DO have an Individual Retirement Account, right?

Keep Calm and…  During uncertain times, you need to keep your wits about you. You can’t do that in panic mode. Need help getting down off the ledge? Grab your notebook (paper or computer) and start writing. Here are some prompts: What exactly are you afraid of? What is the worst that could happen? Seeing the words in front of you not only gives the feelings less power, it helps you form a plan. Then go for a walk, run, swim, yoga class, spin class or whatever. Do something to get your body and endorphins moving. Wear your body out to lower your stress so you can think more clearly.

Do Your Best Work – The company is going to do what the company needs to do. You cannot control that. The only insurance you can give yourself is to be the best at your job. Don’t give up. You’ll either keep your job or you won’t. And if you don’t, you’ll want to use your manager and coworkers as references. Let them be able to honestly tell your next hiring manager that you have enough emotional intelligence to show grace under pressure.

Please share your stories of living with job insecurity here:

Don’t Dread It. Go and Get It!

Photo by energepic.com from Pexels https://www.pexels.com/photo/adult-blur-boss-business-288477/
Photo by energepic.com from Pexels

Shhhhhh. Do you hear that? It’s the collective groan of employees working on self assessments for annual performance reviews. If wracking your brain for strengths, weaknesses, and accomplishments has you searching for the migraine tablets, consider this: You can turn your annual performance review into an opportunity to showcase your mad skills. Last year, I decided to do just that and received a promotion for my trouble 🙂 Here is a formula that worked for me:

Accentuate the Positive
As Stuart Smalley (Saturday Night Live) says, “You’re good enough, you’re smart enough, and doggone it, people like you.” A performance review is the time to remind your manager why he/she likes you. Take this opportunity to blow your own horn particularly if you don’t like to. What were your biggest accomplishments during the past year? Make a list. When you see your contributions in writing, your confidence grows. After listing all you can think of, set the task aside for an hour or so. When you come back to it add any others that came to mind while you were working on something else. (Funny how that happens. You take your mind off a task and when you return to it fresh, you have another idea. It usually comes to me during a time I can’t go write it down, like in the shower.) Pare the list down to your top three for your final draft. BTW, if you don’t have a running list of accomplishments since your last performance review, start one for next year. Right. Now. If you don’t remember the major thing you accomplished six months ago, your manager won’t either.

Eliminate the Negative
A performance review allows you a peek inside your supervisor’s head. Most bosses won’t come right out and tell you what they think of your work – especially if your work doesn’t please them – but an annual review forces communication. This usually involves identifying your weaknesses. Do NOT say you don’t have any. We all do and you’ll be better off identifying them yourself instead of forcing your manager to batter your ego by listing perceived defects. It’s also very tempting to cheat on this one. IE: “My biggest weakness is that I work too hard.” (Can you hear my eyes rolling?) Instead, how about presenting your weakness followed by how you are addressing it? IE: “I’m having trouble formatting the charts in the Activity Reports so I’ve signed up for an online Excel course.” This acknowledges you see an area in which you need to improve and you already have a plan to do so. Stick to just one or two things you’re going to improve by next year’s performance review. No need to expose ALL your flaws.

Latch on to the Affirmative
You’ll probably also be asked to comment on your strengths. Remember the accomplishment list you made? Revisit the things you did not include in your top three. Can you use some of those for your strengths? For example, if “I caught a typo on an invoice saving the department $1000 four months ago,” did not make your top three accomplishments, you could repurpose that accomplishment into a strength: I have excellent proofreading skills (IE: In April I saved my department $1000 when I found a typo while proofreading an invoice). Try to come up with examples of when you saved the company money, made the operation more efficient, and/or made your team stronger.

Don’t Mess with Mr. In-Between
Even if your company says your performance review is not tied to a raise, act like it is. It’s motivation. Establish a baseline against which you want your manager to judge your work over the next year. Use this meeting to pick your manager’s brain. Bob King, a former Senior Vice President of CLEAResult Consulting suggests, “Embrace this process as an opportunity to make sure that your perspective is aligned with your supervisor, and should it turn out not to be, engage your supervisor in a positive fashion to explore where perspectives diverged.” If you don’t have a habit of checking in with your boss every couple of months to ask him/her how you’re doing, put it on your calendar. A performance review should not be the first conversation the two of you have regarding the quality of your work and it’s up to you to initiate that feedback. In your review, set goals that receive your manager’s blessing. Over the next year, keep notes on what you’re doing to reach those goals (online courses, certifications, earned CEU’s) and check in periodically before your next performance review to inform your boss of the progress you’re making. Now is a good time to suggest ways you want to grow. Ways for which perhaps your company will reimburse you (associations you want to join, classes you want to take, conferences/seminars you want to go to). If you approach this review as a “get to” instead of a “got to,” you could come out of it in a much better position than you entered it.

Shout out to Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer for their song “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive.” Now I’m stuck with an earworm.