I once worked with a guy who told me that a perfect employee review was like the kiss of death. I first didn’t understand why he said this, but after he explained I finally understood. No one is perfect, and if you get a perfect employee review you really have two problems. For one, that means no one is really paying attention to what you are doing, and they are not giving your suggestions for improvement. Also, a perfect review gives you no breathing room. If you go from a perfect one to one that suggests you have some work to do, it might appear you are slipping in your duties. Neither of these will do your engineering career much good.

As a new engineer at a new job, your first employee review should be something you don’t take too much to heart. You need to study what they have said, and you must work to improvement, but you should not take it too bad if it isn’t what you had hoped. When you first start out you have a lot to learn no matter how many years you spent in engineering school. Think of your first employee review as a list of possible personal skills that you need to work on, and think of it as life experience. We’ve all been there and survived and you will too.

If you think your employee review is too harsh, you should talk to your superiors about what is going on. Don’t walk in and say that you know you are doing a better job, and certainly don’t go in with an attitude problem. Take your employee review in and ask them for help. Say that you are bothered that you did so badly, and you would like some guidance about what you can do to improve your job performance. They will see that you are easy to work with and that you care about your job, and those are two of the best qualities you can have.

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