Ready to exit your current employer?

These days, resigning from one job to take another isn’t necessarily something you need to worry about especially if you’re been laid off or aren’t currently working and don’t have that problem to concern yourself with.

Having said that, if you are working and want to switch jobs you’re going to need to resign and this is typically an area that people have trouble with either because they’re not sure how to write a resignation letter or to take one step back, simply get nervous about resigning from their current employer.

When it comes to resigning – especially if it’s from a job that you might have held for some time combined with the fact that the economy is still creaking along – people can often and not surprisingly get wet feet when it actually comes time to put things in writing and quit their current job.

You might start wondering if quitting your current job is a good idea especially in this economy. Sometimes people start to rationalize that perhaps their current job really isn’t that bad and that maybe the grass isn’t greener on the other side at the new place they’re thinking of joining.

While working in the recruitment business, I remember hearing and seeing cases where people had signed a job offer and then when it got to resigning from their current employer, they suddenly changed their mind and reneged on the job offer to remain with their current employer. In this case, I’m not talking about accepting a counter offer to remain with your current employer.

In this case, the person suddenly gets wet feet – quite often their spouse, current boss and/or colleagues put a bug in their ear – and they start to think that switching jobs isn’t such a good idea after all and they end up staying with their current employer.

Sometimes people forget the reason(s) they started looking for a new job in the first place and realize that they’re pretty comfortable where they are.

When you add in the state of the economy, people are often further scared off by the prospects of quitting a job that might be stable if not terribly exciting or motivating and going to a company that might offer a better opportunity at least from the outside looking in but upon closer inspection – once you start working there – you realize that things aren’t so rosy and stable as you initially thought.

When it comes to changing jobs, there are always going to be distractions and outside influences that affect your ability to think things through clearly. There will also be very few cases where you find a job and company that appears to be perfect. Every job you interview for and every company you consider will have pros and cons. The question is what makes the most sense to you and to your career given all the information you have at your disposal to make the best decision you can?

So with that in mind, if resigning from your current employer is in the cards and you need some help with your resignation letter I can point you in the direction of a resignation letter template to get you started.

Here is a sample resignation letter that you can use and tailor for your own purposes.

If however you’ve got a job offer in hand and are at the resignation phase but are getting wet feet regarding your decision to quit your current job to take a new one, perhaps you might want to reflect, take stock of your current situation and remind yourself why you started looking for a new job in the first place.

We’ve already spoken about a few issues related to resigning like writing a resignation letter and also the fear of resigning and leaving your current employer.

But another issue that often pops up related to the resignation process is something that can occur even before you’ve got a job offer in hand, something that can hurt you if and when it happens.

It’s when you indicate to a hiring manager or recruiter that you can immediately leave your current job and start a new one right away. The issue is of course is that if you’re working currently, chances are that you have some sort of notice period that you have to give. It’s probably 2 weeks minimum and might be as high as 3-4 weeks in some cases.

So when you are in an interview and show your enthusiasm for a job and suggest that you can quit your current job right away, an alarm bell usually goes off in the head of the interviewer because they basically hear that you’re going to leave your current employer in the lurch and quit suddenly without notice.

Then they wonder how long it will be before you do the same thing to do.

Contractors – people who work on contract jobs – can be notorious for this. If a person has been working on contract for many years, they get used to a process whereby they start looking for a contract before their current one has ended so they can (when possible) leave one contract on a Friday and start a new one on Monday and avoid being unemployed for any length of time.

Typically though, they experience things along the way that cause them grief like when they are verbally promised that a contract will get extended so they don’t bother looking for a new job and then the extension never materializes and they’re out of a job.

Or when they are told their contract is ending so they reluctantly look for a new job and get one and are then told by their current employer that their contract can be extended after all so they’re stuck trying to figure out how to either get out of the new contract they just signed or let their current employer know that they can’t accept the contract extension because they’ve signed a new one elsewhere.

So while contractors have to deal with stuff like this, hiring managers do too and if they’ve been burned by someone leaving a contract or full time job with little or no notice given they typically don’t want to get burned again. In other cases, the hiring manager has made a mistake by telling an employee that they aren’t needed anymore and then lose the employee to another company and then realize they still need this person but it’s too late to retain the person since they’ve been hired elsewhere.

When this hiring manager hears you telling them that you plan on leaving your current job right away and can start with their company immediately with no notice given, they probably start thinking about the situations like the ones mentioned above and fear that when you inevitably decide to leave their employment at some point in the future, you’ll do the same to them.

I’ve spoken with hiring managers on several occasions who have told me that they’ve had problems with various staff members leaving them in the lurch and quitting without giving notice and how this hurt them. This especially hurts on projects and other time sensitive jobs where suddenly losing a key team member can cause costly delays.

Typically, they consider that employees who leave a job without giving notice have little tact or professionalism. When you make it look like you plan on quitting your current employer by giving little or no notice, you tend to give them the same impression of you.