Career Tip of the Day: Keep an Accountability Record and Evaluate Yourself

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Many professionals are used to waiting for — and dreading — the quarterly or annual review they get from superiors. And they’ll often wait until someone else tells them they’re doing something wrong or failing at a task to gain an assessment of their performance or professional growth.

But experts say this is not a good idea. You always want take a proactive approach to your career advancement and hold yourself accountable. Keep a record of what you’re accomplishing on a daily, weekly and monthly basis if possible. Document your strengths, triumphs and successes, whether you helped launch a new successful project, was part of a team who worked to increase the company bottom line or brought in new clients for your company’s services. Include quantitative elements such as profit numbers or other key indicators of success for your industry.

Also, write down areas in which you think you could improve such as productivity, teamwork, technical skills or time management. These are all things you can have as a foundation to initiate a meeting with superiors or teammates to find out your progress and ways you can contribute more to the team.

Not only will you be more on people’s radars but you will have an active role in your own success, not at the whim of waiting on someone else to notice the great work you do. And when it comes time to fight for that promotion or salary increase, you’ll have documentation to state your case.

This assessment is not only an asset for you at your current company, but it can help you determine whether you’re maximizing your time and experience or whether it’s time to move on to the next opportunity.

So, start today assessing yourself and your professional growth.