One of the more challenging aspects in any career is quantifying your achievement during your performance evaluations or job interviews. How can you most effectively and easily do this?
I think the secret to effectively quantifying your achievements is to understand what your industry or department values, what their business commitment/mission statement is and who their clients are. Once you understand what is important to your company or department, then compare your individual performance against those business goals. For instance: if your previous job had a business goal of 90% client retention, express your results in how you assisted in the company achieving that goal, etc.
If you don’t know your previous companies business goals, vision or commitments, then guess. Most businesses goals are to “make money” and “keep their clients satisfied”. If you don’t know your specific department goals, translate what you do in those terms.
Several examples:
You improved a process that sped up delivery or enabled a junior (lower salaried) employee accomplished the task. This means that you saved the company money and you can calculate it. Take the average salary of a senior engineer, multiply it by the number of hours required for the original process. Then calculate the average salary of a junior engineer (now reduced) multiplied by the number of hours (now reduced) of the new process. You now have a tangible and tactile number to report as an achievement.
It costs less to keep clients than to find and win new clients. Therefore, retaining customers saves the company money. Did you maintain 100% customer satisfaction? Did you achieve 100% client retention? Did you win awards or accommodations for client satisfaction? you can easily report metrics of your customer satisfaction and retention results.
You may not be a sales person, but you can still expose your company to new opportunities. Did you publish an article, present at a convention, speak at your professional groups regarding your company or product? Did you bring back sales leads from those engagements?
Conclusion:
The key to successfully quantify your achievements is to create SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time bound) goals at the start. Select metrics that mean something to the bottom line and business goals. Then continually collect the metrics as you go along. Don’t wait until a week of performance review to quantify your achievements. It’s much easier to do is as you go along.
