Getting Out Cleanly – How to Leave Your Job

If you are leaving a position voluntarily to take something new, there is a right way and a wrong way to leave your current company. Here are a few tips:

Resign Classy: See my earlier blog on How to Resign. Keep it brief. Don’t say anything negative, and don’t leave the door open for a counter offer – you’ve made your decision, right?

Be Discrete: Don’t tell people too much about the new opportunity right away. I’d compare this to talking about your next spouse before the ink is dry on the divorce. You can always update people with more details later on. It is better form to say less before you are gone.

Don’t Gloat or Complain: Don’t speak negatively about your current company, or too glowingly about your new company. Comes across as “sour grapes” either way.

Don’t Burn Bridges: This is not the time to tell people off, or tell others in excruciating detail everything you hated about your current company. Actually, it is never the right time to do such things!

Get References: There may never be a better time to solicit letters of reference from people above you in the organization. They want to maintain good will too. Send them a note with “prompts” of what they could write- they are likely to turn your bullet points into their letter. Be smart and send different bullets to different people, so your reference letters don’t all look the same.

Offer to Help People: Others may also wish they were leaving. Solidify your network by sincerely offering to help others down the road.

Years later, when you need your old teammates or superiors for a reference on yet another new job, you will be glad if you leave everyone smiling, on the best possible terms.

For more insight, be sure to visit The Headhunter's Secret Guide!

Comment by Valentino Martinez on October 16, 2011 at 6:12am: @Mark--

You’ve provided some good advice here but I noticed you didn’t mention the exception to such advice which I feel is necessary to temper: “Don’t Burn Bridges…Actually, it is never the right time to do such things!” Sometimes it is the right time to do such a thing even to the extent of burning a bridge behind you.

While the advice may be logical as in, "Don’t rock the boat", doesn't it also give a pass to a bad employer or hiring manager experience? It’s obvious you’re suggesting, with this advice, that there will be repercussions for whoever does not leave "cleanly". However, hearing this seems to also say, “It’s sad day in corporate America to know that maybe some of the best career advice is to shut-up, look the other way, and go quietly rather than confront an outrage when you see one.” Isn’t that sort of condoning bad behavior on the employer’s side if there is bad behavior?

Does this advice also apply to employees who have been wronged, even hurt, by an employer such that they decide it is in their best interest to sue, whistle-blow or voluntarily leave to find a better employer and hopefully better treatment and behavior?

It seems to me you would appreciate getting the straight-poop on an employer from a friend, or anyone for that matter, who happened to have left the very employer you are considering to pursue for employment. Doesn’t it also follow that employers, the good ones, certainly would want to rectify a glaring problem if such information was made available during an employee's exit interview? Yet your advice suggests it’s best to “leave everyone smiling”. You’re not giving many employers enough credit. Many would take immediately corrective action to rectify problem situations. The best employers out there welcome constructive criticism from employees and customers otherwise they run the risk of small problems becoming big problems.

“Mum” or “Getting Out Cleanly” may be the words to be taken seriously when one opts to leave one employer in search for another. Or maybe better words, if they’re warranted, should be:

Comment by Mark Bregman on October 17, 2011 at 4:47pm: Valentino: You raise interesting questions, but I'll stand by my original advice to not burn bridges, and here is why: If the employer or a fellow employee had been guilty of serious wrongdoing, something actionable either internally or externally (legal matter), then hopefully the employee has raised this and gotten an appropriate response long before a departure. The constructive criticism should also have been delivered to one's boss, long before someone leaves. If they are leaving under adverse circumstances, with a claim or suit pending, then NOTHING needs to be said. Under all circumstances though, AT THE TIME of the departure, the person leaving needs to protect his/her own best interests, not the employer's interests. And, in my experience, anyone hoping to give the "straight poop" to a friend comes off badly. There is no good way to portray a negative experience about a past employer, without sounding like the jerk. In 27 years, I can't recall how burning a bridge has ever worked to anyone's benefit.