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Being Honest In Exit Interviews Is Pointless
Esther Schindler writes "Say that you're leaving a job, either on your own volition or because they decided it was time for you to 'pursue other opportunities.' Before you leave, the HR department wants to chat with you about the employment experience, in an exit interview. 'Oh goodie,' you think. 'Now I can really tell them what I really feel.'
Don't do it. If your employer couldn't find the time to ask you what was good or bad about working at the company while you were still working there, writes Lisa Vaas, why bother with honesty and potentially burned bridges now? (If they did ask, give them constructive feedback before you leave this job; they deserve it). Discuss."
Easier headline: exit interviews are pointless.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Let be honest, you must lie at EVERY interview. Exit, Enter, Middle, Top, Bottom, Pointless, etc interview. You may NOT tell the truth. You MUST lie like...like politician. At the end of the day, all the HR do believe that you LIE. So why disappoint them?
Happened to me when they ran out of people to do the work.
If it is someone that can actually make changes be honest. If its an HR person forget it.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Say nothing but good things -
Tell the boss how good they are even tho they are the worst type of asshole in the universe
Thanks the co-workers for their generous help and guidance even tho they are clumsy back-stabbers
Give great praises the company even tho they are giving you the pink slip
That will make them happy, and happy people (often) do not find time to do more harm to you, leaving you plenty of peaceful time to look for new jobs
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I have to disagree. Being honest can serve two purposes: a) it can be extremely satisfying, if you have had a very bad time of things and they are coming to an end, and b) it can highlight bad managers or other employees that have caused you so much grief and they might be reined in so that they don't continue to make life hell for others.
I had an appallingly bad manager some time ago who made my life hell with his ultra-micromanagment and his constant snooping. He finally drove me to leave and there was a bit of a showdown - I wouldn't exactly call it an exit interview but his boss was there. I told him exactly what I thought of him and why he was such a bad manager. I think he was actually surprised that his 'style' caused so much friction. Interestingly (though too late) several people came forward afterwards and told me they had had the same experiences with the same guy, and had asked for transfers to get away from him. My response of leaving was more extreme, but driven by the same problems. I heard a few weeks later he did get moved (not fired, unfortunately) and given a role that did not involve direct people-management. So these things can have a positive result for those you leave behind.
Baby, it's not me, it's you. If you'd have treated me better, I'd stay but this has been going on for too long.
Look, I've already begun seeing someone else and I don't want to cheat on you. Let's still be friends. Really, there's someone out there in this big world who is just right for you but that's not me. I really want you to be happy but I want to be happy too. I gotta go. I'll pick up my things later.
Advice is not free.
I had a worthless boss at a job I left, I requested an exit interview with the head of HR. They didn't normally do exit interviews, but I had been there for 6 years, so they wanted to know why I was leaving. Took a few months after I left to find time for a meeting, but I laid it all out. How I felt, why I left... 2 months later I got a call to come back. They fired my old boss after I opened their eyes to the BS he was pulling. I went back.. with a nice raise and a $4k signing "bonus". It works in certain cases. YMMV.
-Guns kill people like spoons made Rosie O'Donnell fat-
I worked for the biggest jerk in the world, and when I quit, I told H/R the things he had done to me, and urged them to not just take my word but to ask around.
Later that week, they fired him and escorted him out (not typical there).
The next day, my former coworkers had a going-away party for him, but they didn't invite him (and they did invite me).
I gave a good honest exit interview when i left my first fulltime software job.. Wasnt a asshole, and kept it professional, mixed in what i didnt like and what i thought they did real well. The company has hired me back 3 times. Did the same thing at all 4 exit interviews, and maybe if i ever need a job again (with this market one never knows) i will get hired back, and that is worth a lot to me personally. But theres been a couple other places i burned the bridge down from shore to shore, not even a splinter left. Assholes had it coming....and i delivered.
-KI
#include bier;
If you're leaving otherwise secure employment for greener pastures, is it really worth your time to do an exit interview? If your leaving for money, realize that your time is now worth what you're getting paid at the new place!
I say Politely Decline!
Or if they insist, schedule one for the last day you are there, and don't show up.
Here's why,
1. It's too easy to say stuff you might regret. Your leaving, your shoulders are light, and your tongue is heavy. You never know who is friends w/ that HR guy.
2. Even if you are rational enough to point out exactly what was wrong w/ this company w/o belittling anyone, How can you articulate that in a way that won't burn a bridge or how will HR interpret that?
3. You can't resist telling them off? Write a letter to HR, and whomever else you think might need to know. It'll be quicker than an interview, and you can sit on it before sending it. You will probably have someone actually read it.
4. Plan to leave like you're coming back next year. The grass isn't always greener (trust me, I made a lateral move for a higher end potential only to take a per hour pay cut north of 30%, My former boss only has to slightly hint that one day they'll need additional staff before I tell them I'm ready to come back. In my personal hypothetical future case, it won't be my boss, I'm actually quite fond of their leadership, it'll be the guy 2 levels up, who publicly mocked how we had to work all this OT, but not 1 breath later mentioned he's getting a fat bonus check for meeting our deadlines.
(This really happened in front of > 75 people.)
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
I have worked with a lot of HR types over the years and the vast majority of them are worthless steaming piles. Harassment legislation here in the US gives them an overinflated sense of worth and power. Anyone that has been around for a while knows how to game the system when it comes to interviews with HR types. You just throw around a few buzz words, enough to baffle their feeble pea-sized brains, and it's off to round two. Once you are an employee you can expect nothing useful from them. You'll get the annual benefits signup, which is most likely self service anyway. If you dare ask any questions it will surely be met with a condescending sneer. You'll get a notification that it's time to take the BS harassment seminar that everyone sleeps through. At the end of it all you'll get the exit interview. Now if I thought it would do any good to tell them what I really thought of their company I might open up. But the exit interview only occurs under one of two circumstances - I got pissed off and quit or they fired/laid me off. In neither case am I going to be in a great mood. If I quit it's because the company is messed up. What good is it going to do to tell them it's messed up? I'll just end up looking like a malcontent. If I get laid off I might end up saying something that I'll regret later so better to just bite your tongue and move on. Here's the dirty little secret - the HR drones don't give a shit what you think either way. They'll just laugh about it in the lunch room later that day. Here's the other dirty little secret - even if you did tell the HR drone how to improve their company nobody on the business side will listen to them. They are the hall monitors of the business world. Remember that kid in high school that got stuffed into a gym locker? He's working in HR now.
Saying negative things about people is rarely in your interest.
I don't normally reply to anon or trolls, but what the devil are you smoking? What a total misuse of "THE exception that proves the rule" you blithering monobrowed goatbanger. This instance the exception BREAKS the rule, making it not a rule. Dear lord.
Here, read up on it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exception_that_proves_the_rule
http://www.zombieapocalypse.tv/
...and then be blandly pleasant. Otherwise, just don't do it. What are they going to do, fire you?
I'm always amused at the naive goodwill that people extend to their employers. Most of us live in at-will states, without unions, and without any real workers' rights that can be exercised without spending more than they're worth retaining counsel. These are the people who can fire you at any time for any reason, but they want two weeks' warning if you leave on your own. Why give them extra freebies?
Look, forget the employer-employee bullshit. You are a vendor, selling a service. Your employer is a customer. As long as they're buying what you're selling at the best price you can get (which includes work conditions and perceived job security as well as pay and benefits), the customer is always right. As soon as they stop buying, or you find someone willing to pay more, then go attend to your new customer. The old customer wants to take more of your time for free? Politely decline. You're running a business -- you -- and the only point in giving something away free is if it leads to another sale.
Don't bother with work ethic or pride in your job at this point. Those are good concepts and they have their place, but that place is well before anyone starts talking about exit interviews. If you're leaving voluntarily, they treated you well, and you feel like extending the courtesy, sure. But even then, don't say anything that can be used against you later. It's just business, and that's how they see it. Go and do likewise.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
You be nice in an exit interview to keep vindictive assholes from getting an excuse to stab you in the back when they're called on your next job application during a reference check.
When you need someone's help, you kiss their ass.
This message brought to you by the Richard M. Nixon Center for Career Planning.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
A extremely wise manager once told me, people do not quit their jobs, they fire their bad managers.
Got Code?
I've never told anyone how I've felt about working with them: "be careful of the toes you step on today, as they may be connected to the arse you have to kiss tomorrow"
Let it go Carly.
Everything depends on why you are leaving.
Case 1: You are leaving because you had a better offer from another company. In this case, you have nothing in particular to gain by telling the exit interviewer anything at all. You neither benefit by telling the truth nor by lying.
Case 2: You have been fired. Again, you have nothing to gain by either telling the truth or lying.
Case 3: You have been laid off as part of a reduction in force and there is a possibility that if business improves they'll hire you back. In this case you have something to gain by flattering the company and its people. Tell them how much you regret leaving. Tell them they were great to work with and you wish things were different.
Case 4: You are leaving because you didn't like the working conditions, had moral objections to the way management runs the company, your boss was a giant prick, etc. You have nothing to gain by telling the truth or lying.
But in the absence of having anything to gain, there are still motivations that come into play. Would you like to make working conditions better for the people you're leaving behind? Chances are you don't despise all of them. Identify the wasteful and counterproductive practices, useless or abusive bosses and meaningless makework that were part of your job. Tell your interviewer how they made your job harder and are still making others lives harder. Maybe, just maybe, this information will get to the right people, especially if you were a highly productive employee. Somebody knows that. In all likelihood your boss and maybe your boss's boss know that. And now they know they are losing productive employees in part because of their working environment.
In most cases, you should lie about salary. Tell them you are taking a job that pays more, allows you more control of your work and offers more benefits. HR is always trying to find the lowest total cost of benefits and salary at which they can hire and retain the people they need. It is in all workers' best interest if their estimates are pushed to the high side. And the HR people at the company you're leaving talk, directly or indirectly, to the people at the company you're going to, and to every other company where you or someobody you care about might eventually work.
I had the opportunity to burn bridges that needed burning in an exit interview once.
I took complains, issues, and documentation. They took it seriously, and shook the hell out of the department when I left. My manager was "promoted" to a position where he had no staff. Soon after, he 'left.'
Exit interviews are situational, like everything else in life. Treat accordingly.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
It all depends on what actions are taken with the information - and who does the interviews.
A few years ago now - over a period - my company lost several key developers - and tech experts. I don't work for our HR department - but I was working as a peer (with 15+ years experience) to those that had left. I rapidly got fed up with seeing some really good colleagues leave - and so I requested to as many as I could to exit interview them. Noone that I asked declined - as they knew that I wasn't from HR - and I explained that the main reason was to improve the company - and try to fix the issues that they had with it. I had quite a detailed set of questions - and collected answers in the same manner from all. Then I went through the answers - and came up with suggestions to improve things. One of the key things for our company was - that when tech experts / devs get to a certain level - the only career paths open to them - was management or sales - and most wanted neither. I started the changes such that we managed to introduce a technical expert career track - which means that you can now be a tech expert all the way up to the second to top level in our company (top level being director / CEO). Subsequently I got comments from those that left that if this had happened earlier - then they might not have left. There were many other issues that we took forwards and tried to address - some with success - some not. I've always believed that it is best to try to fix the company I work for before looking outside. If the company I work for ever becomes closed to these fixes - then I will up sticks and go elsewhere.
An exit interview is giving information for nothing in return. I appreciate much more when people post their own reviews on Glassdoor.com rather than just sharing their thoughts with HR.
Once in my life I was honest in an exit interview and it came back to haunt me later...
I had an exit interview after I had worked for a automotive-related company in the Netherlands. At the time, it was promised to me that whatever I said in this interview would remain a private matter between me and the HRM department and would be used in an anonymous context to improve things. Even so, I refrained from making any remarks towards the functioning of individual colleagues or my boss, and only commented on the serious flaws in research and development strategy the company (and my department) deployed, which were actually the reasons I decided to leave. It was constructive feedback. No ranting, nothing of the kind. I outlined a strategy that would, in my opinion, work out. My arguments seemed to be taken seriously and I went away with the feeling that at least I did what I could to steer things in the right direction...
About three years later I was invited back for an interview by a different department of the same company who had specific needs for my expertise and I felt that in this department I could do some useful work. However, before I was hired, I was invited by my former department head for an interview. In this interview the gloves came off: He had an exact copy of everything I had said in the previous exit interview before him and he was NOT amused. He said the interview was "to see if I had learned something in the meantime" but it was blatantly obvious that he was going to block me from being hired back. Didn't need to because I declined immediately after I learned how HRM had handled this.
In the end, it turned out for the better, because it was one of the events that prompted me to start my own company and I am now making more money that I could ever have made over there and I am sure having a lot more fun doing it. Still it sucked at the time...
I was very unhappy at my old job (with management). I was polite in my exit interview, but certainly did not give them any praise, including the people conducting the interview. I had no concern about the repercussions, simply because the company I was moving from was hated in the industry, and the company I was moving to had a long history of disagreement with them.
In this case, the management of the company I was leaving telling the new company that I was "not a team player" and all the other drivel serves me better than a glowing review. Of course, it's worth noting that I had been a liaison to the new company prior to moving there, so they already knew I was a hard worker and competent.
Just another ignorant American.
Yes you can - under the Data Protection Act 1998, you have the legal right to demand a copy of all data held about you by any entity, be it private or public. They are allowed to charge you a maximum of £10 for it, and if they don't comply then oh boy, can they get in the shit for it.
Who can not be honest even when people are willing to listen and the chance of personal consequences is far-fetched, I have to say that your current employer is not losing anything by you living.
Just speak your mind. The company may not put much weight on any one opinion, but they most probably do care about a statistical picture of people leaving the whole company or a specific department.
I used to work at a place where the local director was the absolute power king over every employee, every division, every task in the geographic area. He had to report up the line to someone from a different city, but if it happened in or around Houston he was responsible for it. Call him a "choke point" if you like but there was no "stovepiping" in the organization. Such would be impossible since he knew everything that was going on.
He also knew every name of all 2000 of his employees, their spouses names, and most of their kids names. The guy was amazing to work for and almost no one ever left.
Anyone who did leave (most via retirement) got an hour of his time. It was an unstructured time. He asked few if any questions. Anything you said was heard by the only person in the place who could unilaterally fix any problem. He was there to thank you for your years of service and hear anything you had to say.
Understand, please, that this was a guy who fixed problems. I once saw him suspend an entire working group for a day and send them home because of the way they had treated a retail customer. He then called all the first and mid-level managers in that department and ordered them to drive in from their outlying offices, stand at the counter, and serve the walk-in customers for the rest of the week while he personally conducted customer service training for the suspended employees. Sweetest guy you'd ever want to meet but, boyohboy, he could kick ass when he was forced.
Given all that, not much changed after he heard an exit interview because few people had witnessed enough continuing bad behavior to warrant a change. Still, the few bad managers we had would try, years in advance, to transfer out employees who were nearing retirement. If you were a jerk boss and you let someone retire out of your group, The Director would hear about you. And you would, quite likely, find yourself demoted to working alongside the people you used to boss around. If he was told about a real equipment safety problem, you'd see him talking to the maintenance guys and their boss, personally, to find out how to fix it. If he was told that the paper workflow in a certain place was screwy, you'd see him drop in to shadow some low-level employee for a day.
Hell, he shadowed two field employees per year for an entire day of public interaction out of general principle. Truly a great guy.
That was a quarter-century ago. I realize times are different now and people are much more mobile. No executive could spend an hour with everyone who leaves; there aren't enough hours in the day. Thus, exit interviews, even if they happen, are conducted by an HR drone.
Exit interviews to an HR department are a waste of time. Exit interviews with the big boss can be something completely different.