CAREER ADVICE

What Really Happens in Appraisal Meetings

5 brutally honest lessons from someone who was in the room

Photo by on

Non-Medium members can read the story here.

It’s appraisal season — the annual corporate ritual where careers are made, stalled, or quietly shelved. Bosses play God. Employees hold their breath. The outcomes are often arbitrary. Sometimes brutal. Sound familiar?

I just got out of one such meeting yesterday. Here’s the lowdown on how to turn those performative — oops, performance — appraisals to your advantage.

For context, I work at an MNC with almost 800,000 employees across the world. I’m in the marketing space and my boss reports to the CMO. The meeting in question was attended by all people managers in our marketing sub-function.

I’m sharing this so you can relate the insights to your own context — and decide how to apply them.

Here we go.

1. It’s all hearsay

Here’s the harsh truth: Nobody really cares what you do. Unless your role directly drives revenue, what matters most is perception.

The stuff that you painstakingly put into the appraisal tool? Irrelevant.