Simply put, a brag document is a living document which tracks the highlights of your career. As little wins stack up, you can add a quick recap of those wins to your brag document to help yourself remember the context and outcomes later. The small habit of keeping an up-to-date brag document can have a huge impact on your career.
A brag document is great for:
Here are some of the key pieces of information you'll want to include in each entry
Brag documents are very flexible. Assuming you have the relevant information in each entry, you have a lot of creative freedom to structure entries in a way that makes sense to you. However, It’s important to keep it simple so that you’re more likely to keep it updated. My rule of thumb for brag documents is to keep it simple enough that you can make a new entry in less than one minute.
I prefer to use the STAR Method to format my recaps because it forces me to include all of the necessary information while giving me a structure to get started. This also has the advantage of giving you a head-start when preparing for interviews, since the STAR Method is now the industry standard for behavioral interviews.
Sharing examples from your brag document with your manager has two key advantages:
This may be a bit controversial but, if you’re comfortable with it, I highly recommend creating a role-specific copy of your brag document and sharing the entire document with your manager directly. This makes the process of sharing your accomplishments a collaborative effort and ensures that they have the context they need when they need it Conversations about promotions and compensation adjustments will likely happen when you’re not in the room, and equipping your manager with the context they need will help them be a good advocate for you.
That said, not everyone will want to share their brag document directly. If you’re uncomfortable with that level of visibility (or if your manager has lost your trust), that’s completely understandable. In that case, try sharing your brag document indirectly by occasionally sharing key updates from your brag document in a 1:1 or through direct messages. That way, you can still ensure that your manager knows about your accomplishments.
Not every accomplishment involves launching a new product. Many important skills for senior-level roles (such as influencing others, removing roadblocks, or mentoring teammates) happen behind-the-scenes and are therefore more difficult to quantify during a performance review. Including specific, high-impact examples of your soft-skills in your brag document will make it much easier to illustrate these skills later.
Your career ladder is your company’s wishlist of employee traits. By linking your accomplishments to specific areas of your career ladder, you are effectively saying “You told me you want X. I gave you X this quarter, and here’s when/how I did it.”
📈 Looking for a promotion? Try linking your accomplishments to the career ladder one level above your current role. If you can prove that you’ve been performing at the next level for past 3-6 months, you will make the case for your promotion even stronger.
If your company doesn't have a career ladder that’s visible to employees, try connecting your accomplishments to their core values instead. While core values aren’t as role-specific, they do reflect your company’s ideal employee. They provide a way to link your accomplishment to something the company values.
To make it easier to get started, I’ve created a free template which is now public in the Notion template gallery. The template comes with five different views, a best practices guide, and a template to get you started.