Guide · 9 min read
Getting ready for a performance review
Build a year-long record of your work, read the written review calmly and leave the meeting with agreed next steps.
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Reviews, goals, raises
Shiftano: move your career forward from the job you have now
Progress at work rarely arrives in one leap. It comes from a review you prepared for, a goal you kept track of and a pay conversation you walked into with numbers. Shiftano works through each of those moments with a believable example, so you can borrow the method and fill in your own facts.
- Worked examples. Every guide follows one person through the real steps and numbers.
- No account needed. Every page opens without a login.
- No job listings. Not a job board, staffing agency or hiring company.
- Real replies. Write to [email protected] and a person answers.
How Shiftano works
Each guide takes about nine minutes and closes with a checklist you could finish this week. Together they follow the yearly rhythm of most workplaces.
Look back
The review guide shows how to keep a weekly work log, write a self-review with checkable facts and read your manager's notes without panic.
Look ahead
The goals guide turns a broad direction into two or three goals with dates and a first step, then sets up a monthly check-in.
Ask for it
The raise guide gathers outside pay figures, builds a one-page case and walks through a salary request in dollars.
The guides
Three guides are published so far. In each one you get a worked example, a step list, a table to scan, a short word list and questions to bring to your manager. You can choose to get a text when the next one appears.
Guide · 9 min read
Setting career goals you can work on this year
Pick a direction, turn it into two or three concrete goals and plan the first step for each one this month.
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Guide · 9 min read
Asking for a raise with evidence and good timing
Research what the role pays, build a one-page case from your results and pick the moment when budgets are still open.
Read the guide →Why the job you have is a good place to start
Career advice often assumes the next step means leaving. For many people, though, the fastest path to better pay, more interesting work or a new title runs through their current employer. Your manager already knows your work, your record is already on file, and a raise or a stretch project can happen without a single application.
That path still needs effort, and most of it is quiet: noting what you finished each week, deciding what you want to be good at next, and choosing when to ask. Shiftano breaks that effort into small, repeatable habits and shows them in action.
The guides cannot promise any outcome. Employers have budgets, rules and priorities of their own. What preparation changes is the quality of the conversation, and over a few years that tends to show up in the work you get and what it pays.
Words you will see in the guides
- Work log
- A weekly running list of what you finished and improved.
- Self-review
- Your own written assessment before a review meeting.
- Development goal
- A skill or task you agree to build over the year.
- First step
- An action small enough to take within seven days.
- Pay range
- The lowest to highest pay an employer sets for a role.
- Budget cycle
- When an employer plans next year's spending, raises included.
A yearly rhythm that keeps progress steady
January is a good month to write two or three goals and book a monthly check-in. Spring and summer are for doing the work and logging it, one line a week. In the weeks before reviews, sort the log under your employer's rating categories. Once the review is done, compare your record with outside pay figures and, if they support it, ask for a raise before next year's budget closes. Then the cycle starts again with fresh goals.
None of these steps takes long on its own. Their value comes from repetition: a line a week, a check-in a month and one well-timed conversation a year. Miss a month and simply pick up again, since the record you already have does not disappear. People who switch employers can carry the same habits along, because a work log and a short list of goals carry over easily and make the first review at a new job far less of a guess.
Common questions
What is Shiftano?
A website of worked-example guides for growing in the job you already have: preparing for a performance review, setting career goals and asking for a raise. The Nelson M Group LLC runs it.
Is Shiftano a job board or a staffing agency?
No. Shiftano lists no openings, sends no job alerts and places nobody with an employer. It publishes guides you can use on your own.
Does Shiftano cost anything?
No. Reading the guides costs nothing, and the site has nothing for sale.
What does the Get started form do?
It puts you on the Shiftano list so you hear when a new guide goes live. The form needs your first and last name only; leave email, ZIP code and mobile number blank if you like, and the text box can stay unticked.
Hear when the next guide is out
Add your name through the form. Texts only come if you tick the box.