Templates · Careers & job search
Brag document template
For a running record of accomplishments that feeds performance reviews, promotion packets and résumé updates. Origin: Julia Evans, "Get your work recognized: write a brag document" (2019), now common practice in engineering and product teams.
Sections
- Goals for this period
- Projects with impact
- Collaboration & mentoring
- Design & documentation
- Company building
- What I learned
- Outside work
- Goals for next period
How a tough reader scores it
When you score a draft against this format, the Critic evaluates this brag document. The weights add up to 100; the fixes for the weakest criteria arrive as cards in the editor.
| Criterion | Weight |
|---|---|
| Projects state the writer's own part and a measured impact | 30 |
| Covers the less visible work: mentoring, documentation, process | 20 |
| Specific enough that a manager could cite entries in a review | 20 |
| Honest about what was learned, including misses | 10 |
| Goals for next period follow from the record | 10 |
| Kept as a running list rather than rewritten as prose | 10 |
How it works in SecondPen.ai
Open the template and the editor writes the blank once, with a line of guidance under each heading that you delete as you fill it in. Write your abstract and the editor names the format it reads like. Ask for a document with a slash command and it offers to start from the matching format. When the draft is ready, the Critic scores it against the criteria above, the way this format's toughest reader would, and the three highest-leverage fixes become Editor cards.
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