Trust, quality of work and doing that little bit extra are the keys to a high performance rating writes Lisa Hughes.
As a recruitment consultant at Barden, I meet a lot of people coming out of training contracts. I also happen to work with a lot of leading companies that love to hire great, early-career accountants. Without fail, these clients ask us to check two things.
Firstly, what was the candidate’s performance rating during their training contract? And second, did they pass their FAE exam at the first attempt or not?
The latter isn’t as big a deal as it used to be, but it is still ‘a thing’. And it’s easy to give advice on that – pass the exams the first time around!
The former – performance rating – is a little more difficult to tackle. All the big firms have their own rating scale. It can be from one to five, five to one, or ME, EE and so on. First off, let’s establish a standard which we’ll call the Barden Rating for now. One equals top and five equals bottom, while three means “meets expectations or on par with peers”.
The Barden Rating, like the other performance ratings, will broadly follow a normal distribution curve. Not everyone can be a one because if they were, then everyone would be a three… if you follow the logic.
Roughly speaking, the top 5-10% of an intake will get a one rating; the next 20% will get a two rating; the majority – the next 50% – will get a three rating and the rest will hit four or five.
I should mention that those with a consistent rating of four or five might find it difficult to see out their training contract.
So, now we have established a common language, what is the difference between someone who gets a two rating and someone who gets a three rating? We spent the last five years asking people that very question. More specifically, we asked: “Why did you get a two rating when someone else got a three rating?” The most common replies included:
- “In my second year, I acted like a third year; in my third year, I acted like an assistant manager.”
- “My manager trusted me to deal with the client.”
- “My manager trusted the quality of my work and didn’t need to look over my shoulder.”
- “I worked a little harder than some others… but not that much harder.”
- “I took on an extra client, and helped one of the team when they were under pressure.”
Trust, quality of work and doing that little bit extra to help out. These appear, to us at least, to be the key. Yes, politics likely plays a part but for most, it appears to be a secondary factor at best.
What do you think is important? What did you do to earn that two rating last year? Or what do you think makes for a one rating? Let us know – we would be delighted to hear, learn and share!
Lisa Hughes ACA is an Associate at Barden.