Describe a time when you disagreed with a performance rating you received.

During my tenure at Cisco, I participated in a project where I collaborated with a devops team and testing team to accomplish the resource allocation . At the end of the project, each intern received an evaluation from our direct supervisor. I was surprised to find that my performance rating was lower than I expected, given the contributions I felt I had made.

Task:I wanted to understand the basis for the rating and felt it was important to clarify any discrepancies between my self-assessment and the supervisor’s perception. My goal was to maintain a positive relationship while advocating for the work I had done.

Action:I requested a brief, one-on-one meeting with my supervisor. In that meeting, I calmly listened to their feedback to understand their perspective fully. Then, I shared specific examples of my contributions:

• How I had taken the lead on documenting the current resource allocation and new resource allocation based on my experience.

• My involvement in proper resource allocation resulted in 25% reduction of P1 issues due to resource allocation.

• The additional responsibilities I took on to get all resource approvals and helm script changes went unnoticed.

I also provided the documentation and metrics I’d been tracking to illustrate the impact of my work. By centering the conversation on factual evidence and outcomes, I was able to highlight aspects of my contribution that might have been overlooked initially.

Result:After reviewing these points, my supervisor acknowledged that some of my behind-the-scenes work wasn’t fully visible to them.  we agreed to have more frequent check-ins going forward. This experience taught me the value of proactive communication and documentation, ensuring that both my manager and I have a clear view of my responsibilities and achievements.

I've worked for startups and haven't had a lot of formal performance reviews, but when I worked for Verizon, I did get a "performing" rather than exceeding expectations rating for one of my reviews. I'd been tasked with relaunching a feature into a new product line, and as part of the execution of the relaunch we hit a number of major snags with the data architecture of the core product. It made the onboarding of the new product awkward and I pushed back on this quite a lot, which was frustrating for my teammates in the core product. Upon reflection, I'd have approached the shared data structure problem from a broader perspective and asked for help positioning potential solutions that would work for both our products.