9 Self-Assessment Examples to Help You Prove Your Worth

The annual self-assessment is an important component of the performance management process. It gives you a chance to reflect on your biggest successes and failures and discuss your career and future with your manager.

Self-assessments can also strongly impact your standing in the organization. They go into your employee file, which is likely to be reviewed by company executives, HR professionals, and other managers in the company. Knowing that these self-assessments will become part of your professional record, it is important that they reflect your best efforts.

That said, writing a self-assessment can be a struggle. Before you start copying from a template, however, you must consider the value of a genuine self-assessment that reflects your real contributions to your organization. Below, we provide some examples to help kick-start your own assessment.

Self-Assessment Examples: Reflecting on Results

Every self-assessment is an opportunity to detail what you’ve accomplished during the performance review period. As an employee, this is your chance for a jobs report to demonstrate the value you bring to the company, using real examples of real work you’ve done.

While the facts and figures may differ, all the following examples share some common elements that you should include in your own self-assessment:

1. Data: Keeping a journal of your accomplishments and results throughout the year can pay off when it comes time to write your self-assessment. This allows you to draw on specific examples of your achievements, presenting your value in terms of cold, hard, incontrovertible data.
2. Be Specific: “I responded to customer inquiries in a timely fashion” is much less meaningful than “I responded to all customer inquiries assigned to me within 24 hours.”
3. Rationalize Your Results: When talking about a success you had, explain how you achieved it. Share critical details like who else contributed, how responsibilities were divided, and how you went above and beyond. If you took special initiative to ensure the success of a project, this is a good place to document that. If you came up short on a goal, reflect on what you learned through that experience and how you would do things differently now.

1. Sales Representative

In my first three months as a sales representative for Acme Rocket Company, I have met and exceeded new hire expectations for sales performance. I was informed during the hiring process that it usually takes up to three months for new hires to start hitting heir monthly revenue targets, but I was able to meet and exceed my personal revenue targets in each of my first three months. I sold 109 percent of my target in March, 111 percent in April, and 105 percent in May.

The biggest factors in my success have been my attention to detail and my responsiveness throughout the sales process. Between April and May, I responded to 92 percent of inquiries from prospective customers inside my territory within 24 hours, regardless of when or how the inquiry was received. The remaining 8 percent were responded to within 48 hours. My timely responses and attention to detail have resulted in a 78 percent closing rate for new customer inquiries, enabling me to exceed my sales targets each month.

2. Marketing Manager

When I began my role as marketing manager at Acme Rocket Company, my goals were to increase our exposure within the industry, expand our thought leadership, and help Acme position itself as an industry leader. Throughout the year, I engaged my team members on three important initiatives: increasing Acme’s presence at industry conventions and trade shows, increasing Acme’s visibility at industry conferences — especially those with speaking opportunities — and enhancing our support of Acme’s account-based marketing strategy by developing personalized white papers and research reports for our most important target accounts.

I am extremely proud of what my team and I have accomplished during the past year. Last year, Acme attended just two conventions and one trade show. This year, we were present at four industry conventions and four trade shows, enabling us to further promote our brand, connect with important industry players, and generate key contacts for our sales team. We also booked Acme speakers into three separate conferences, creating a huge platform for us to evangelize our technology and the customer service approach that makes us uniquely valuable to our customers. For example, we scheduled our CEO for a speaking engagement at the annual Space Commerce Conference. The CEO’s speech attracted more than 10,000 live viewers on Facebook and boosted our social media following by 17 percent in two days.

Finally, our team produced 41 individual white papers and research reports for our target accounts this year. When our sales team sent these reports to prospective clients instead of a generic sales message, closing rates were 18 percent higher and revenue per sale was 41 percent greater.

In total, our three key initiatives have helped increase our inbound lead volume by 87 percent compared to this time last year.

3. Customer Support Representative

In my first year as a customer support representative for Acme Rocket Company, I maintained high standards for customer service and responsiveness. Given the target of maintaining an average call time of less than 10 minutes, I maintained an average call time of 7:22 throughout the entire year. This was a full two minutes faster than the company average of 9:25. I also maintained an average customer satisfaction rating of 94 percent throughout the year, compared to the average rate of 90 percent for other employees in my role. Finally, I minimized escalations by achieving a first-call resolution rate of 95 percent, compared to the company average of 90 percent.

Together, these metrics demonstrate that I have consistently provided our customers with quality and timely service that exceeds their expectations and the requirements set by Acme Rocket Company. The single greatest factor in my success has been the way I make use of Acme’s internal resources, including training materials and internal contacts. I developed a deep familiarity with our knowledge base by reading it during less busy periods, and I spent lunch breaks interviewing reps from other departments about how to answer customer questions related to their work.

Self-Assessment Examples: Reflecting on Mistakes

At work, we all strive for perfection. However, mistakes are unavoidable. Instead of trying to sweep them under the rug, it is important to treat mistakes as opportunities for improvement.

Your manager wants to see that you can recognize when your performance isn’t up to par and identify ways to correct it. Analyze your work, looking for times when you fell behind or didn’t get the result you wanted, and think about how you can do better in the future.

1. Sales Representative

Despite meeting my most important performance objectives during the past three months, there were times when I struggled with my job responsibilities. There were several occasions where I missed daily activity targets for lead generation and customer calls, something that should never be acceptable for someone in my role with a positive work ethic. In my view, those days represent lost opportunities to contribute even more sales to the team. While I did meet my sales targets by responding decisively to warm prospects, I could have enlarged my sales pipeline by meeting my outreach targets on a consistent basis. I am working toward improving my time management and scheduling to ensure that I consistently meet daily activity targets going forward.

2. Marketing Manager

Because of the ambitious nature of this year’s marketing strategy, there were times when I pushed my team hard to perform at their best, put in extra hours, and deliver on highly demanding projects. In general, I am always patient and understanding with my team members about the challenges they are facing, but there were times this year when I was perceived as too blunt when giving feedback to the team. While I would never compromise on my drive for results, it is important that I take time to give more thoughtful and considerate feedback to members of my team. When we are working under the pressure of deadlines, I can positively influence the team attitude by demonstrating confidence and work ethic. I need to improve my emotional response to stress so I can set a better example for my team.

3. Customer Support Representative

Although I demonstrated outstanding success in providing service to our customers over the past year, I have identified several areas of opportunity for improving my job performance.

Despite my consistency in resolving customer issues, I was only able to successfully cross-sell our products to 5 percent of my customer base, short of my goal of 7 percent. Further developing my technical knowledge of our products will enable me to make better product recommendations to our customers. I also need to understand more about how to communicate value propositions to our customers to help them realize when it makes sense to purchase more from us. I believe that additional sales training and education about our products would assist me in upselling more in line with company expectations.

Self-Assessment Examples: Setting Goals for the Future

The most important part of your self-assessment is defining your goals for the future and discussing them with your manager.

Your professional goals will generally fall into two categories: things you want to accomplish in your current role and your goals for professional advancement into other roles. Your self-assessment is your opportunity to identify activities you’d like to be doing more of today and to talk to your manager about what you need to do to move to your next role.

It is important to set specific and measurable goals for your future performance. Your manager should help you create a strategy to achieve your goals, but they can only do so if you’re transparent about what you’d like to achieve.

1. Sales Representative

I am excited to build on my early success as a sales representative with Acme Rocket Company. I have demonstrated my ability to meet sales targets with quick and responsive service, and I believe that improving my time management will create more closing opportunities for me over the next year. My objectives in this role for the coming year are:

– Achieve 120 percent of my cumulative sales target for my first 12 months of employment
– Meet my daily activity requirements with 90 percent consistency (currently at 75 percent)
– Maintain a closing rate of 80 percent for new customer inquiries

While I have enjoyed success so far as a sales representative, I believe that my skills would be well suited to the position of sales manager. As a sales manager at Acme Rocket Company, I would lead a team of sales people, providing the training, support, and tools required for them to succeed. I have always been passionate about teaching others to succeed, and I believe I could train new hires to replicate my early success with Acme Rocket Company using the knowledge, skills, and insights I have developed in my time here.

2. Marketing Manager

In the past year, our team managed to attend eight conventions and trade shows and secure speaking engagements at three industry conferences. In the coming year, we should optimize our strategies surrounding these important events to maximize our return on investment. Acme Rocket Company should continue to produce personalized marketing materials for its target accounts, a practice that has yielded significant ROI over the past year.

In the coming year, my goals are:

– Increase measurable ROI on Acme Rocket Company’s convention, trade show, and conference participation to 40 percent through cost reduction
– Increase inbound lead volume by 30 percent
– Increase lead capture on company website by 50 percent
– Complete training courses in leadership and constructive feedback

In the past year, I developed a further interest in marketing strategy and the work our marketing directors do to determine how the company will invest our annual budget. In the future, I would be interested in learning more about marketing strategy development for Acme Rocket Company.

3. Customer Support Representative

In the past year, I was successful at providing fast and efficient service to our customers, but my sales numbers lagged behind my goal. The biggest opportunity for me to improve my upselling is by making it a focus of my professional development for the coming year.

My goals for this year are:

– Increase my upselling percentage to 7 percent (currently 5 percent)
– Achieve a first-call resolution rate of 95 percent or greater
– Achieve a 95 percent customer satisfaction score by providing exceptional service
– Complete a sales training course
– Complete a technical training course related to our products/business

The best part of my job is being able to provide exceptional service to our customers. Over the past year, I developed a genuine passion for our products and brand, and I take pride in representing our company each time I interact with our customers, a quality I believe has driven my success in service. In the future, I hope to take on a management role where I can share my passion for Acme Rockets and help build a world-class customer support department.

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Your annual performance self-assessment is an opportunity for you to reflect on your achievements and shortcomings during the past year and set goals for the future, including for your advancement within the organization. We hope you found these examples useful in writing your own self-assessments that will help you reach your professional development  goals now and in the future.

A version of this article originally appeared on the ClearCompany blog.

Sara Pollock is head of the marketing department at ClearCompany.