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Tracking Your Accomplishments: A Winning Career Strategy
By Julie Kasten, TSA Career Coach
You have a performance review scheduled with your supervisor and expect that it will go pretty well. After all, it's been a busy year and you've had a packed schedule. You've put in so many hours, but do you remember all of the relevant details of your accomplishments? And, most important, can you convey your contributions to your supervisor in tangible terms?
Why it Matters
Positive performance reviews are essential to advancing your career, but it's often difficult to remember all of your achievements when evaluation time comes. Working at such a fast pace, we often lose track of the many things we achieve on the job.
Recalling and articulating these details is just as crucial during a job interview or when writing narrative responses to questions in vacancy announcements. The more relevant and specific information you share about your experience, the more memorable you will be as a job candidate. In order to stand out from other well-qualified candidates, you will need to share solid, memorable examples of your skills in action.
How it's Done
So how do you prepare now for success at these crucial career moments? Start keeping track of your achievements by documenting the major tasks and projects you complete at the time you complete them. Compile a list of duties you've assumed inside and outside your role, projects you've personally spearheaded, and accolades that you've received.
A popular structured interview question asks candidates to describe their biggest failure on the job and what they learned from it. So, keep some notes about success and, yes, failures, at work—big ones, little ones, progressive gains, educational achievements, positive feedback, negative feedback—you name it. When you come up with a great new time-saving process, make a note about it and date it.
Start storing nuggets of information for your annual performance evaluation or your next interview, and build your case for future advancement.
Keeping a record of your accomplishments does not need to be complicated. It can be as simple as adding a notation on your calendar, keeping a separate file on your computer, or a simple series of Post-its, provided you don't lose them. Make some notes on the latest version of your resume as a reminder to yourself. Keep an informal work journal as a tool to track what you've done, what you are doing now, and what you might be able to do in the future.
Whatever method you select, the important thing is to have your record readily available when you need it. So next time you complete a noteworthy project, don't just move on to your next task. Compose a quick email or note to yourself capturing the highlights so you won't forget. Add it to your running file of accomplishments. Then, when your performance review rolls around and you are actually encouraged to sing your own praises, you won't have to scramble for material.
Not sure what to record? Imagine yourself in an interview describing your accomplishments to someone you have never met. Use the Challenge-Action-Result formula:
- What challenge needed to be resolved?
- What obstacles did you have to overcome?
- What steps did you take to meet the challenge?
- What happened as a result of your actions?
Your TSA Career Coach will be happy to help you to shape this language for maximum impact—and help you to use it effectively in a variety of settings.
The Bottom Line
You are in the best position to know just what you have achieved on the job throughout the course of a year, and it's your responsibility to convey this persuasively—in your performance evaluation, and in interviews. In many instances, your supervisor will not have been able to track the details of your accomplishments. Even if you work side-by-side, he or she may not remember the specifics of your contributions later.
Assume that no one else is going to keep track for you, and that no one else will be able to fully articulate how you add value without specific and tangible reminders.
So start keeping track of your accomplishments today. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Not next month. Today. You'll be glad you did.
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