Self evaluation examples and the Self-Review game

Run your year to your self-review, from intern to manager. Jump the managers with a minute, dodge the flying PIPs, and grab the pizza that gets you promoted. Below the game are self evaluation examples, grouped by what they show.

Jump the managers, grab the pizza, stay under the invites.

Annual review. Four quarters, one review.

Take your timeHalf speed. Points don't count.

How to play Self-Review

Make it through the year to your self-review, from the new hire to Manager. You run down the office, four quarters in about 50 seconds, and the year gets faster every quarter. There is one button: Jump. Press it, Space or tap the picture itself, and you jump.

Each quarter brings its own trouble, named on the title bar: a hiring freeze, budget cuts, a reorg. Outside, it snows in the first quarter and the office works after dark in the last.

What is in your way

Coming at you	What to do
A wet-floor sign, a stack of reports, a jammed printer	Jump
A manager with “Got a minute?”, two coworkers gossiping at the water cooler	Jump
A paper plane stamped PIP, at knee height	Jump
A calendar invite, at head height	Stay on the ground. Jumping runs you into it

Pizza is your career

You start as the Intern, in the new hire’s hoodie, cap and lanyard. Two pizza slices float in every quarter, up where only a jump reaches, and each one you grab promotes you: Employee in a green jumper, Senior in red with glasses, then Manager in the suit, where you look just like the people you’re dodging.

Get hit and you drop a rank, flickering back into your old outfit. Get hit as an Intern and you are fired, except in the first quarter, which is your probation.

Good to know

Tapping the picture works the same as the button, so a thumb can stay anywhere on it.
Right after a hit you blink for a moment, and nothing can hit you again.
The Take your time switch runs the year at half speed.

How Self-Review scores

Every obstacle you clear pays your rank at that moment:

Rank	Points an obstacle
Intern	1
Employee	2
Senior	3
Manager	4

A perfect year clears all 40 obstacles and grabs every slice, so you are Manager by the middle of the second quarter: 137 points.

Points out of a perfect year	Grade
90% or more	Exceeds expectations
60% or more	Meets expectations
30% or more	Needs improvement
Less, or fired	Performance plan

The result reads like a review: your grade, your rank at the end and a line from your self-review, with a photo of you at the review room’s door, or of the moment you were fired.

Daily and solo rounds

Everyone who presses Play today’s round gets the same year, obstacle for obstacle and slice for slice. Play solo deals a new year.

Self evaluation examples you can use

How to adapt these examples

Put your own result in place of each number and tie each line to a team or company goal. Then name an area to improve and the step you’ll take. In British HR guidance, a performance review is also called an appraisal.

Examples that show impact

Lead with what changed, and put a number on it.

Cut average ticket response time from 2 days to 4 hours.
Closed 14 new accounts in Q3, 3 above target.
Delivered the office move 8% under budget and on time.
Raised customer satisfaction scores from 4.1 to 4.6.
Brought standard contract review down from 10 days to 3.
Kept the Q4 forecast within 3% of actuals.

Examples that show ownership

A mistake counts as ownership if you say what you did next.

Took over a late project and delivered it within 6 weeks.
Owned the billing migration end to end, from plan to launch.
Took responsibility for the June outage and led the review.
Made an invoicing error, told the client first, and fixed it.
Proactively flagged budget risks 2 months before quarter end.
Owned renewals for 20 accounts and kept 19.

Examples that show teamwork

The strongest teamwork lines name something other people still use.

Mentored 3 new hires through their first 90 days.
Wrote the onboarding guide every new hire now starts with.
Covered a colleague’s accounts during their leave without dropping any.
Coordinated a cross-functional launch with product, sales and legal.
Built a dashboard the whole team now checks every Monday.
Helped the design and sales teams settle a long dispute over priorities.

Examples that show growth

Show what you changed after feedback or a mistake.

Asked 5 peers for feedback and changed how I run handoffs.
Learned SQL to answer my own data questions.
Acted on last year’s feedback and now share drafts earlier.
Learned to check assumptions early after a costly misread.
Area to improve: catching small errors before I hit send.
Goal for next year: finish the project management certification.

The self-assessment, as HR reads it

A perfect year is not the point

In the game a clean run is the goal. A real year has a stumble or two, and a review that admits one reads as honest. A small number you can back up beats a big one nobody believes, and a manager who has to ask for the source has stopped reading.

So name the stumble, say what you changed after it, and say how you’ll move the needle next year.

Clichés and “always”

In written reviews of more than 23,000 people, high performers got the most exaggerated feedback, statements with “always” or “never” in them. They also got more clichés than the rest, like “thinks outside the box.” Exaggeration reads as praise when someone else writes it, and as padding when you do.

Two weeks for one page

One university’s form tells supervisors to give staff at least two weeks for the self-assessment. The game fits the whole year in about 50 seconds.

Questions about self evaluations

What should I write in a self evaluation?

List your main results, each with a number and the team or company goal it served, and say what you owned to get them. Then name the areas you want to improve, each with your next step.

How long should a self evaluation be?

Short. A focused page that doesn't bury your manager beats a list of every task you did.

How do you measure success in a self evaluation?

By the measures your job is judged on, such as impact, quality, timeliness, budget or customer satisfaction. Put a number on each one, like a percentage or a count of days.

Should a self evaluation mention weaknesses?

Yes. Name each area you want to develop, with the step you're taking, such as a course or a new habit. That shows how you've grown since the last review.

How do I write my own self-assessment?

Start by going back over the year, using your goals, calendar, email and meeting notes to remind you what you did. Ask a few colleagues or clients for feedback, and check your job description so nothing it lists is missing. Then write it up short and proofread it before your manager sees it.

What is a good example of a self evaluation comment?

Cutting average ticket response time from two days to four hours is a good one, because it names the result and puts a number on it. For teamwork, point to something colleagues still use, like an onboarding guide every new hire starts with.

Sources

The 6 sources behind this page