How can you write a good employee self-assessment?

Employees can write good self-assessments by highlighting their strengths and achievements over the period while being honest about their mistakes and shortcomings. They should keep their assessments concise and professional in tone.

The employee self-assessment is a helpful performance review tool because it lets managers get an employee's perspective on his or her own job performance. Self-assessments usually take place every 6 months to a year alongside employer performance reviews.

1. Highlight accomplishments and strengths
Employees can use the self-assessment to their own advantage and start off the review on a positive note by listing their strengths and emphasizing their accomplishments. Managers can sometimes forget about the accomplishments of individual employees, especially when they have larger teams to supervise. Employees should always tie these accomplishments to specific projects or contributions to the business or work team, as doing so makes it easier for managers to tie these to performance.
2. Include mistakes and shortcomings
Employees should also be sincere in their reviews and follow their accomplishments with an honest take on their shortcomings and any mistakes that they made over the period. No one is perfect, so it can be advantageous to be clear about failures, missed goals and weaknesses. However, employees should use this section of the assessment to highlight how they can grow. They should explain what they learned from any major mistakes that they made and write about how they think they can overcome their shortcomings.
3. Outline career development
Employees can finish the self-assessment by outlining how they plan on growing within the organization. They can use this section to request professional development opportunities or different roles within the work team.