Preparing for Your Performance Review: A Six-Point Checklist for Employees

There is an asymmetry of preparation in a performance review, and it almost always runs the same way. Across the table, someone has re-read the file, the objectives, possibly feedback received from a third party, and has the framework imposed by human resources. On your side, the typical preparation consists of re-reading your objectives the night before and deciding you'll see how it goes.

The imbalance isn't one of intent: it's one of material. And the good news is that the material exists, it is yours, and it is dated.

The principle: preparing means re-reading

Almost everything that will be said in that hour has already happened. The request that landed in March with a three-day deadline, the decision made in May that pushed the project back, the note of thanks received in July, the warning you raised in September that went nowhere, the commitment given last year about a training course.

All of it is written down. And that is precisely what nobody re-reads, because re-reading is tedious and because memory gives the illusion of being enough. Yet memory is not enough: it holds the last three months and the two most intense episodes, and it erases regularity — which is to say, exactly what counts.

Useful preparation takes two hours, and most of those two hours are spent in your inbox and your calendar, not in drafting. That is the point of ScanMyJob: putting back into sequence what twelve months of work correspondence contain — the dates, the requests, the deadlines, the commitments, the periods of load — without adding anything to it.

Point 1 — The actual chronology of the year

What to produce: one page, month by month, with two or three factual items for each month — what was delivered, what changed, what weighed. Where to find it: the calendar is the best source, better than the inbox. The meetings, their titles, their frequency, the dense periods and the quiet ones reconstruct a year in twenty minutes. Why it comes first: because it systematically corrects the recollection. Two effects occur almost every time. The first is that you rediscover the first half of the year, entirely erased — and it represents half of the period being assessed. The second is that you identify the turning points: the March reorganisation, the departure of the person who held a particular file, the change of tool. Those moments explain a large share of the gaps, and nobody remembers them without having re-read them.

Point 2 — Results, with their evidence

What to produce: five to eight lines, no more. Each in the form: what was done, the verifiable result, and the trace.

"Overhaul of the sign-off process: average turnaround down from 9 days to 4 between April and September — tracking sheet, committee of 12/09."

The rule that makes the difference: a result with no figure and no date isn't a result, it's an opinion. "I worked really hard on that file" can't be picked up and used by the person opposite you; "the file went from X to Y" can be, and it will be — including with people you will never meet. What gets forgotten every time: the work that wasn't a project. Covering for an absent colleague for two months, settling in a new starter, the six catch-up meetings after an incident. That work appears in no objective and sometimes accounts for a third of the year. If it isn't said, it doesn't exist.

Point 3 — The gaps, and their causes

What to produce: the short list of what wasn't achieved, with, for each one, what explains it — distinguishing what is down to you from what isn't. Why not to avoid it: because the person opposite you already has that list, and turning up without having looked at it is the worst possible position. Naming them first changes the balance entirely: it places you as a professional who knows their file rather than as someone defending themselves. How to phrase it: without self-flagellation and without blame. "The objective wasn't met. Two causes: the supplier's delivery slipped by six weeks — the emails of May and June — and the reallocation of two days a week to file Y from September. What is down to me: I didn't flag the first point early enough."

That last sentence is the one that pays most. Acknowledging a precise and limited share makes everything else credible; acknowledging nothing makes everything suspect.

Point 4 — The commitments the organisation made, and what became of them

What to produce: the list of what you were told last year — a training course, a change of scope, a recruitment, a six-month review point — and what happened to it. Why this point is the most neglected: because the performance review is experienced as a one-way exercise in which you account for yourself. That is a misreading. The meeting concerns a working relationship, and the research on the psychological contract — the set of unwritten expectations between an employee and an employer — shows that it is precisely the commitments not kept, rather than the objectives not met, that produce disengagement. How to phrase it: without reproach, with the date. "We agreed in January on training in X. It couldn't be scheduled. I'd like us to reposition it this year." The fact is undisputed, the request is clear, and nothing is put on trial.

Point 5 — Three requests, ranked

What to produce: three requests, not eight, framed as concrete outcomes and ranked by how much they matter to you. Why three: beyond that, none stands out, and the person opposite you will remember the one that suits them. A short list obliges them to take a position on each. What makes a request workable: it concerns something the person in front of you can decide or carry, and it is framed as a state to reach, not a shortfall to repair. "I'm asking to lead strand Y from the next cycle" rather than "I don't get enough recognition". The particular case of pay: it is a subject in its own right, with its own preparation rules — timing, anchoring, range, non-salary trade-offs. Simply know, if you intend to raise it here, that it is never handled as the first item of the meeting: the context of the appraisal has to be laid down first.

Point 6 — The three difficult questions

What to produce: the three questions you know are coming, and a prepared answer to each, out loud.

You already know them: the question about the objective that wasn't met, the question about a specific incident, the question about your intentions in the medium term. The fourth — "how did the year go for you?" — is the trickiest of all and has its own article.

Why out loud: the difference between an answer you have thought about and an answer that is available to you runs through the voice. Under moderate emotional load — and a performance review produces one — access to language narrows. Three run-throughs are enough.

What you must never bring with you

A ten-page document. It won't be read, and it signals the opposite of what you want: it announces a case for the defence. One side of a page, structured, is more effective and will be re-read afterwards. A comparison with a colleague. It is the argument that backfires fastest, in every configuration, because it puts the person opposite you in the position of having to defend someone who isn't in the room. An ultimatum. It removes the other person's room for manoeuvre and forces them to choose between giving way and holding firm. They will hold firm. A list of grievances with no request attached. An account of what is wrong, with nothing that can be acted on, leaves the other person with no possible action — and they will file the exchange as a tense moment, not as a request.

The point to watch on criteria

An appraisal that rests on criteria announced in advance can be discussed; an appraisal that rests on a general impression cannot. That is the difference the research on procedural justice identifies as decisive: it isn't the severity of an appraisal that damages a working relationship, it's the fact that it is ungrounded and uncontestable.

In practice: if you don't know what you will be assessed on, ask before the meeting, in writing, and keep the answer. It is useful for this year's review, and even more so for next year's.

The tests on the platform let you take stock of your relationship with being appraised — some people absorb negative feedback without it spilling over, others don't, and knowing which changes how you prepare. The assistant can help you shape a request or work up a difficult answer.

Three things this article does not do

It does not say what the law requires. The framework applying to these meetings, whether they are mandatory, the deadlines and the formalities all depend on a text and its interpretation — those are questions for an employee representative, for your HR department, or for the labour authority in your country. It does not promise an outcome. Solid preparation changes what gets said and what remains afterwards; it does not decide budget trade-offs. It does not describe anyone. Neither you nor the person opposite you. The method concerns dated facts and what was agreed — not intentions.