How to nail your salary appraisal?

Update
This week we are taking a break from growth strategies for products.

Why?
I want you to get rewarded every year in your salary appraisals. Most of us fail to get the appraisals/ promotions we deserve. This 1 min read will prep you for this appraisal season.

Fact
Never take salary appraisals for granted.

Question
Do you think you deserve an appraisal this year?

Action
Don't wait for your manager to take charge.

Here’s how to nail appraisals 👇🏼

📄 Document your outcomes

If it's not written on a Notion or a paper, you are going to forget what you have done 6 months back. Create a simple 1 pager document of what your OKRs were & how did you fair against them.


⚖️ Decide what you want

I have seen smartest of my peers & reports clueless about what they want apart from just a "30% salary increase". Create a narration on what you want including what you like & don't like about your role & where you want to scale into. If you are specialist, talk about the charters/metric you want to own. If you are a mid-senior generalist , talk about what kind of orgs you want to build/ lead. Always bring more than just $$ to the conversation.


💡 Understand the appraisal process

Most scaled orgs (200+ employees) will follow a 360 feedback method for appraisals. Spend some time understanding who all are involved in your own appraisal process. If there is a document around this in your company knowledge base, read it.


💵 Know your worth, real worth

Almost everyone who Google's the salary benchmark gets confused. Don't trust the benchmarks, those are averages. Think of the impact you are creating on numbers & then zero down on what you think you deserve. Thumb rule - if you work at a startup & playing the long term game, ask for more stocks. Remember - taxes eat salaries for breakfast 😅


🙏🏼 Get your reporting manager on your side

Most fail to understand this piece. You need to give your manager so much arsenal (your outcomes, projects) that he/she can go into the appraisal budgeting meeting with confidence about your case. Pre-work from your side + detailed conversation with your manager helps.

That's all, for now. Go prep now.

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