My first-ever performance review was for a huge consulting firm. It felt like drinking water from a firehose: How could I condense everything I’d done and learned into a few paragraphs? I stayed up all night, hacking together a list. But when I was done, I realized I’d missed the mark. All I had created was a record of the activities I’d done. The “so what?” wasn’t there. It wasn’t an ideal way to kick off my career. So, I developed a system that helped me track and celebrate my milestones and prepare for my reviews—without subjecting myself to disgusting coffee and all-nighters. Here’s my system, and how you can adapt it for your performance reviews. Step 1: Identify your metrics A successful performance review connects your accomplishments to metrics that matter. So, how do you identify the most important metrics? Pull verbs from your job description When you boil down a job description down, the verbs are what matter. Those words—along with … [Read more...] about A simple 5-step system to ace performance reviews