It’s Appraisal time! Many companies conduct periodic reviews to give feedback on their employees performance and assist employees in developing their career.
The Appraisal period may be of six months or one year depending on company policies. Performance Appraisal is the right time to ask for your promotion as well as salary raise.
In this tutorial, we will concentrate more on “QA Performance Appraisal” along with the skills and parameters that are used to judge and rate QA Performance?
What You Will Learn:
Why Performance Appraisal?
Performance Appraisal is to reward employees for their good work. The Appraisal will assist employees to develop in their career and enable them to reach their full potential.
The Performance Appraisal process involves discussion on the previous year’s employee achievements and identifying an area for improvement. This will help employees develop clear performance objectives for the next review period.
This tutorial will help you in the following ways:
- If you are a fresher and have not yet faced any appraisal, you will get an exact idea of what performance review is and how to face it.
- If you are an experienced Quality Assurance engineer then you will know “How to ask for a promotion and salary hike in your performance review”.
- How to effectively summarize your hard work and responsibilities into a good impression in front of management.
For companies that have a yearly appraisal system, the Performance Appraisal process begins a month before the end of each financial year.
Performance review forms get distributed to every eligible employee with instructions on how to fill out the form and to whom you need to send these filled forms. After that, a face-to-face review meeting will be scheduled with the reviewers.
The following major activities get discussed in the Review Meeting:
- The project you did in the previous year.
- Employee overall performance
- Comments on performance ratings given by employees and reviewers.
- Employee feedback
- Areas for improvements
- Performance planning for next year.
What are the Criteria’s yo Rate Employee Performance?
We are specifically speaking about QA performance appraisal, so here are the main parameters to be considered while rating software testers/QA persons.
Software Testing Skills:
- Ability to find Bugs
- Bug Reporting Skills
- Ability to Automate Work
- Test Cases Design ability
- Testing Completeness and Coverage
Management Skills:
- Effective Role Model
- Team Motivation Skills
- Estimation and scheduling ability
- Ability to anticipate and address issues.
- Mentoring ability
- Planning and Time Management Skills
Personal Skills:
- Can work independently
- Team player
- Self-learning
- Discipline
- Willing to learn
- Takes initiative
- Admitting mistakes
- Grasping skills
Other Skills:
- Communication (Written and Verbal)
- Documentation Skills
- Interviewing Skills (if applicable)
- Training and Presentation Skills
Based on these parameters, employees can give self-rating from 1 to 10 for individual parameter and the overall rating as the average of all these ratings. Reviewer ratings will also be there in front of each skill and the reviewer’s final rating.
Ratings are classified as shown below:
Rating from 1-5: Poor performance
6: Need improvements
7: Meets position requirements
8-9: Exceeds position requirements
10: Exceptional! Exceeds all requirements at all times.
In the Performance Appraisal form, the employee needs to give feedback on his/her work till date. Also feedback on the company culture, work process, and management style.
The employee feedback section is the best section to ask for a promotion or salary hike. Mention your overall & relevant QA experience and your ability to handle more challenging work assignments. This will create a solid base for management to decide on promotions and salary raises.
The reviewer will fill out the “Employee Performance Planning for the next appraisal” section. In this section, he/she will address the improvement areas like technical and non-technical skills or other personal improvements.
The reviewer needs to mention some specific goals that the employees need to meet for the next appraisal. This will become the base objective for the next appraisal period.
This is the overall appraisal process. Now the key part is how and when to ask for promotion and salary raise?
Here are some key points that you need to study before asking for a Promotion and pay rise:
#1) Your previous year’s top Achievements: You should be ready with a list of key projects you have done in the past year. What was the overall quality of work during this period? Note down some examples, which will illustrate your contribution to company growth.
#2) Positive attitude: Management likes employees with a positive attitude. Management will think about your leadership qualities before promoting you.
#3) Your relationship with your boss and co-workers: This is a crucial point. Make sure that you don’t have any disputes between you and your boss or co-workers. You should be a fair team player.
#4) Any major work issues in the previous year? You should be aware of project issues created by you. If these issues are major then think twice before asking for a promotion or pay raise.
If the issue is minor and if you were not directly responsible for those issues, then you can give an explanation of these issues, if the management raised these negative points in your Appraisal meeting. Make sure that you don’t blame any of your co-workers for any issue.
#5) Explain why you deserve a promotion: You need a solid work portfolio to explain this. Put forward your contribution to the company and explain how this helped to improve the company.
#6) Are you prepared to handle the challenges of senior-level positions? Senior-level positions involve more responsibilities. You need to have both technical as well as management skills to handle such positions. Explain how you are the best fit for the new position.
#7) Be prepared to present the exact amount to be raised in your salary: If management is ready to promote you then you might get this question: How much pay rise do you expect? So do a little study of the current market salary range for your new position.
Come up with some exact figures by doing the analysis of your current salary, the company’s previous salary hike records and your accomplishments for the appraisal period.
#8 ) Know the exact time for getting a pay rise: If you got promotion in the last performance appraisal then ask for a promotion in the current appraisal only if you did some outstanding work. If the company is in some financial problems then wait until the company gets out of this situation. (But don’t wait too much ;-) )
Conclusion
In short, be professional and specific. Ask for promotion and salary raise, otherwise, you will get nothing. Prove your hard work and responsibilities. Be prepared for any outcome. It may be positive or negative. Be calm in your response and don’t forget to thank your boss and handshake at the end of the appraisal meeting.
Hope this tutorial will help you to climb your career ladder efficiently and will add some professionalism to your career.
If you have a good or bad experience in your previous appraisals then don’t forget to share your experience with our readers, so that the others can learn something from your experience. After all this site is for growing in your career by sharing each other’s thoughts!
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