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.

Sometimes we make mistakes in life and unfortunately sometimes mistakes occur specifically in terms of the jobs we accept.

Have you ever accepted a new job and several days or weeks after starting, you begin to think that you’ve made a terrible mistake?

Studies that I’ve read show that people typically feel they’ve made a mistake switching jobs within about 8 weeks of starting a new one. During this time, they start seeing the new company as it really is and perhaps start noticing things aren’t exactly as they were led to believe.

I’ve helped people get new jobs and then on their first day, their manager forgot they were starting or didn’t even have their desk ready for them. When stuff like this happens, people start wondering if they were really wanted by the company afterall?

Perhaps the job isn’t as desirable as you thought. Maybe you suddenly wonder why you wanted to leave your previous employer so badly?

I know of a few people who quit a job, started a new one and within 2 months were back again working for the old employer. Whether or not they were happily working again for the old employer is another story I guess…

When looking over a person’s resume it’s often interesting to read their experience and see stability in their employment, where they stayed with their employers for a few years…and then suddenly see a job where they only lasted 8 months or something similar. I immediately wonder what happened.

Did they get laid off?

Were they fired?

Did they hate the job, quit and get a new one?

Sometimes it’s a case where a better opportunity came up and they left to take it.

While you don’t want to build a resume where you look like a job jumper, jumping from company to company in a short period of time, you also don’t want to stick around in a situation that just isn’t working.

It is best though to make sure you look before you leap: if you’re thinking about quitting a job you recently started, it’s best to think about exactly why you want to leave and first make sure it’s the right thing to do.

In my experience, waiting and seeing often ends up being the best thing and your new job ends up being exactly what you had hoped it would be.

Two weeks notice is probably the most common amount of notice that a person has to give when leaving a job. Three weeks or longer is also common especially for more senior positions.

Conversely, the company you’re working for typically agrees to pay you for the same amount of time if they decide they no longer want you to work for them (ie. due to a layoff or downsizing for example) and let you go. So in this instance, they can pay you to not work for them for a few weeks or longer if they terminate your employment without cause.

We already discussed quitting a job with little or no notice given and why you want to avoid this for various but something I didn’t cover in that post was the legal reason(s).

Depending on your job, your company and your personal situation, leaving a company without giving proper notice could become a legal issue if your (former) employer decides that they want to hold you to giving whatever notice is specified in your work contract.

Granted, most companies aren’t going to take former employees to court to enforce the notice period but I have heard of specific situations where this has happened. I’ve also heard of situations where a company enforces the non-compete part of a work agreement when one of their employees decides to leave voluntarily and takes a job with a competitor.

Depending on your job, your leaving the company without giving the required notice might cause the company to be hurt monetarily or otherwise and in this case, they could decide to take you to court to make you pay – literally – for injuring them.

The easy way to avoid this is to give proper notice when quitting and ensuring that you abide by the terms of your work agreement. Sometimes in practice this can be difficult if (for example) a job pops up and they want you start earlier than your notice period will allow. In this case your best bet might be to speak with your current employer and see if you can get a shorter notice period and see what happens. It could be a lot better than simply quitting early and hoping or expecting that nothing further will happen.

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.

For anyone following Conan O’Brien’s divorce from NBC, it’s an interesting look at how things work for some people when they leave their employer under less than ideal circumstances.

Getting paid to not work for your employer any longer is something most people won’t experience in their life. Some of you may have experienced this phenomenon during your career especially as the economy has soured over the past year or so but most of us won’t know the feeling that Conan has ie. getting paid tens of millions of dollars to not report to work any longer.

The best way to resign from an employer is to do it honestly and with consideration given as to the terms of your employment ie. if they require two weeks notice, you give them two weeks notice or whatever your contract dictates.

Unlike Conan – who got to badmouth his employer to many laughs during the last few nights of his show – the best way you can leave your current employer is in a good way and without badmouthing your employer as you exit stage left.

At this point you don’t want to burn any bridges as you’re leaving the company. Not only is it the right thing to do, you never know when you’re going to run into these people again.

Plus you might need their help in the future as a reference.

And if you happen to be resigning soon, here is another chance to check out a resignation letter template you can use for yourself.

Signing a non-complete clause when joining a new company is an increasingly popular inclusion of the job offer that many employers use to limit your ability to work for a competitor in the near future and/or to prevent you from using knowledge that you gain from your new employer at other companies.

Typically, when you get a job offer in hand and find that there is a non-compete clause in it, people will tend to do one of two things:

1. They sign it without much consideration.
2. They read it over, think briefly about the possible ramifications and then sign it.

Let’s face it, when you are about to join a new company, you’re probably pretty excited about the possibility of doing so and aren’t too concerned about your next job after that and whether or not it could be limited by signing a non-complete agreement with the company you’re about to join.

Your local labor laws will have an impact on the enforceability of any non-compete clause that you end up signing as will the wording itself since you might find that the enforceability of some clauses can be challenged in court if they are unfair.

In general terms, a company can’t prevent you from working and gaining employment after you’ve left their employment but in the same instance, they might be able to limit your options for a period of time.

I recall an experience where a candidate I was helping find a new job – a fairly senior IT executive who had left a financial services firm to join another financial services firm – ended up having to quit his new job when his previous employer threatened to take both him and his new employer to court as they considered his employment there to be a violation of his non-compete agreement.

He didn’t believe he’d done anything wrong but when he and his new employer discussed it, they came to the conclusion that it was perhaps best that he quit to avoid any messy and possibly costly court case. In this case, he figured that even if he was found to be in the right, it probably wouldn’t have been a great start at his new employer who were also being threatened to get dragged into the situation.

So he ended up unemployed and spent a number of months out of work before until he was able to find a new job, with a company that wasn’t close to competing with his former employer!

The only personal situation I’ve had with a former employer was the first recruitment firm I worked with. Upon quitting, they sent me a letter to request that I return a black plastic card file box that contained hundreds of small 4″ X 6″ paper cards that I’d used to hand-write names of companies and hiring managers I’d spoken with over the previous 3 years. This was a file box and paper cards that I’d purchased myself, on my own accord. I was a “contractor” with this company – they only hired recruiters who were incorporated so they didn’t have to worry about doing all the stuff that they have to do when they hire a fulltime employee – so they clearly wanted the best of both worlds. They wanted to pay me like a contractor but treat me like I’m an employee where they owned stuff that I used in the company premises even though the box and cards were ones I’d bought and paid for!

I ignored the letter so they called me and upon reminding them that the box and cards were ones I’d purchased myself, they seemed to realize how silly and petty they were and the situation was forgotten.

Sales organizations are notorious for thinking that they own customers and while they can certainly try to prevent you from doing business with their customers for say 1 year after you’ve left the company, they certainly can’t order their customers to continue doing business with them after you’ve left if the customer doesn’t want to!

While I didn’t contact any active customers that my former employer was dealing with and while I didn’t violate the non-compete clause I’d signed, I had hundreds of names and contacts of people who were not customers in this file box and I wasn’t going to just turn this over to them for no good reason. It belonged to me, not them.

Incidentally this is the same company that fired one of my colleagues when she knew that another colleague was looking for a new job and didn’t tell them.

Seriously.

They fired her because she didn’t tell them that she knew that one of our colleagues was looking for a new job. And this was a recruitment company, a company that gets paid to take people out of other companies.

When it comes to non-compete clauses, it’s probably something you’re going to deal with moving forward at some point in your career.

Unless you’re a lawyer, if you have any concerns regarding a non-compete clause that is put in front you – whether it’s as you’re about to sign a job offer or after you’ve already started the company – you might want to consult one and pay a bit of money to do so up front to save you grief and pain in the future.

Are you afraid to quit?

If you’ve never resigned from a job, resigning or quitting can be a difficult thing especially if you are close with your boss, colleagues and company and if you feel a sense of loyalty to them.

I can think of a few occasions where job searchers I was working with sailed along through the job search process until the job offer stage and as soon as they accepted the offer and it came time for them to resign…that’s where the problems started.

I remember one case early in my recruitment career where I’d helped a young guy working in copier sales get a job with one of the major copier companies, a good sales job. He was currently working for one of the small, independent sales agencies that also sold copiers but as his new job was actually with one of the major copier and office equipment manufacturers, it was a much better job in the short and long term. More money, better employer, better long term prospects.

But when it came time to resign, he suddenly changed his mind. I still remember the conversation.

“I started thinking about the job and decided that it’s better for me to stay where I am for the time being” he said.

He started listed all sorts of excuses that seemed to justify in his mind why it was the right decision:

“I’ve only been with this company for a year and I think I should stay here for another year at least before changing jobs.”

“I’m thinking about moving to a different city in the future so it doesn’t make sense to change jobs at this time.”

I remember trying to convince him that the job he’d accepted was the right thing for him (which I truly believed it was) but I just couldn’t convince him. In this instance, it was his first job out of school and for some reason he couldn’t quit even though he was going to go to a better and higher paying job.

I’ve had other occasions where a job offer is accepted and as soon as the resignation phase kicks in, the candidate has difficulty resigning so I walk them through the process, help them put a resignation letter together, help them figure out when and how they’ll tell their boss and then have them call me on the phone to let me know when they’ve resigned.

In the vast majority of time, things turn out just fine.

A big part about resigning is convincing yourself in advance of what is about to happen and understanding that you are about to make this change for the better by moving to a new job. Perhaps thinking about the reason(s) you started interviewing for a new job in the first place can help to jog your memory, too.

The first time I resigned from a company wasn’t easy because I liked my boss and colleagues but I was working in New Zealand at the time and had decided to move home so there was a bigger picture for me to consider.

Another big part of resigning is planning ahead to reduce the stress you’re facing. It can be a bit difficult sometimes when you get a new job and finalize the offer on say a Monday and are expected to start in two weeks but are required to give two weeks notice. In this case it takes planning ahead and perhaps a bit of negotiating. If you accept an offer on a Friday and are expected to start two weeks on the following Monday but also need to give two full weeks notice to your current employer, well you’re going to have to resign on the same Friday you got the offer or first thing on Monday morning at the latest. Properly planning ahead takes stress away and makes things go smoother.

If you’d like to read more about the resignation process and view a sample resignation letter I have put together, check out the post called A Resignation Letter Example You Can Use.

The rule of the day relates to quitting your current employer and exiting with class.

The last thing you want to do when you leave a company is burn any bridges. This isn’t the time to spill your guts about everything you hated about the company – although you might have a chance to take part in an exit interview and get some things off your chest – but I’d remain civil anyways.

Remember to plan ahead and give the proper notice period when quitting. You don’t want to leave your employer in the lurch by quitting early without their consent. I remember doing a reference check for a woman with her former manager and the only thing he mentioned was that she had quit suddenly without giving proper notice and that he didn’t want to do a reference for her as a result. I guess she’d forgotten about doing this. Her former manager obviously hadn’t.

I’d also try to help out and wrap up loose ends before I left the company so that I don’t leave anyone holding the bag and wondering what to do with the work I was handling. I recall a colleague leaving our company and me getting some of her work dumped on me without any direction as to what to do. Other than wasting my time trying to figure all this out, it left me with a bad impression of this former colleague since she didn’t bother to fill me in before she quit.

A clean break is the best way to leave your current employer.

You never know, you might have to work with these people again.