How to Capture Your Career Wins (Before You Forget Them)
Think back on the last three months. What were your biggest accomplishments? You likely have many, but the responsibilities of everyday work can sometimes make it easy to forget your big wins. Taking time now to reflect can help you have clear examples of your impact when you need them the most.
Your reflection time can be an exercise of assessing not only the completed tasks from a set period, but also how far you may have grown in your role.
"Before you know where you're going, it’s good to reflect on where you've been," says De'Anna Randle, assistant director with HR's Learning and Talent Development. "For me, creating a 'done list' helps to name progress by capturing accomplishments, meaningful moments, recognizing growth and building your toolbox of skills along the way. This turns timely self-reflection into insight to create a strong foundation for development and goal setting."
Reflect-Gather-Align is a quick framework to prepare your 'done list' without adding to your workload:
Reflect
Start by looking back on the past year and asking these questions:
- What major projects did I work on?
- Where did I push myself?
- What did I learn from challenges along the way?
- What skills did I stretch?
- How can I continue to enhance my job performance?
Focus on big wins, but remember success can be things like process improvements, cross-department relationship building or configuring a new process behind-the-scenes. If you had a goal-setting conversation last year, revisit those goals and reflect on the progress you made or how and why priorities may have shifted.
Quick exercise (2 minutes): Think about the past three months. Write down two things you accomplished, big or small.
Examples:
- Streamlined the reporting process
- Onboarded a new team member
- Figured out that software issue
Now pick one to dive into deeper. What skill did you use or develop? (Communication? Problem-solving? Technical skills? Patience?)
Gather
Next, collect concrete evidence to support your accomplishments or goal progress. This could include metrics or outcomes, but also emails thanking you for your work, meeting notes to document progress or feedback from colleagues or stakeholders.
Quick exercise (3 minutes): Open your sent emails from January. Look for a time you:
- Solved a problem
- Coordinated something complex
- Shared expertise
Save that email. Can't find evidence in an email? Think of one metric or outcome from a recent project and document it. It could be something like faster turnaround time, fewer errors, better attendance or positive feedback.
Align
The final step is to think about how your work supported your team and the university. This step helps the conversation shift from "Here's a list of what I did" to "Here's how my work contributed to the various goals and where I'd like to go next."
Quick exercise (2 minutes): View the University Strategic Imperatives and Six University Values. Pick one Strategic Imperative or University Value that resonates with one of the accomplishments you chose from the Reflect portion of the framework.
Example: My process improvement improved operational effectiveness by reducing approval time from five days to two.
And there you go! You just spent seven minutes reflecting on your recent work.
Make this a habit and take 15 minutes every quarter to document your accomplishments. Download this template to track your wins throughout the year.
This practice of ongoing documentation makes career development conversations, performance reviews, and job applications much easier. Taking time to note these things can make it easier to articulate your accomplishments and their impact, and to ensure your contributions aren't overlooked just because they happened months ago.