Part 9: Getting away gracefully…giving notice at your old job
So, you have a brand new job! Congratulations! Now, how to resign from your old one…
You did negotiate a start date that allows you to give appropriate notice at your old job, right? Every place is different, but in America, two week’s notice is the norm…anything less could leave you with a bad reference, something you wish to avoid at all costs.
Friday is not always the best day to quit…
Most people give notice to end their old jobs on Friday and start the new one on Monday, but that can be a bit short sighted. Before you do that, confirm that your medical benefits extend to cover you for that brief time between jobs…usually a weekend…before you get enrolled in your new employer’s benefit plan. Usually you are covered through the end of the month, but if the end of the month falls on your last Friday, you may find yourself without coverage over the weekend and, Murphy’s Law being what it is, that will be the weekend your son will fall out of a tree and break his arm or your daughter will come down with a stomach complaint necessitating a trip to the ER. Select your termination date for mid-week, if necessary, to ensure that you do not go through a period in which you and your family are not covered by your company’s medical insurance.
Be a professional about it
Once your new start date…and termination date…have been selected, it is important to immediately write a letter of resignation. It doesn’t matter if you are an accounting manager in a major corporation or if you flip burgers, it is important for you to resign in a professional manner. You cannot know when your failure to do so may come back to haunt you. We all harbour the fantasy of giving that rude, insensitive boss a piece of our mind, then stalking out in a high dudgeon, but there are a multitude of good reasons why we don’t, chief among which it the blot such behaviour will leave on our personnel records. Your personnel file is the only thing guaranteed to still remain with the company long after you and The Boss from Hell have moved on and, in response to a reference check years later, read by people who have no personal recollection of the circumstances surrounding your dramatic exit. There will only be the notation “Left without notice after altercation with supervisor,” not exactly a glowing reference, “at will” employment notwithstanding.
The nuts and bolts
So what do you do? You write a carefully crafted letter and hand deliver it, one copy to your supervisor, one copy to the HR department, one copy for your records.
There must be no mistaking your intent or the particulars of your leaving. Your letter should be gracious, but reveal nothing of your future employment plans. By giving two weeks notice you are giving your employer time to find ways to thwart your plans and, if it is possible and in their best interest, some employers will do just that. It is therefore in your best interest to play your future employment plans close to the vest.
What do you say?
Address the letter to your immediate superior and make sure the letter is dated. Say something like this:
“It is with regret that I must inform you of my intent to resign from Bigge Corporation, effective Friday, September 4, 2009, at close of business.”
You can follow this with a nice paragraph saying how much you have enjoyed working there, or how much you will miss your colleagues, but the sentence above is really all you need.
After your signature include a “cc” notation for Human Resources and make sure you deliver the letter on the same day you notify your superior.
These letters should be hand delivered…your employer should get two full weeks notice, not two weeks minus postal delivery time.
What not to say
Most people are uncomfortable with delivering what they perceive to be “bad news,” so they try to soften the blow with more verbiage. Resist that temptation…what you state in writing here can come back to haunt you if your employer takes your resignation badly.
Don’t say that you have learned anything from any aspect of your association with the company. You could find yourself on the wrong end of a trade secrets lawsuit, your resignation letter used as proof that you learned valuable information from the company you are leaving.
Don’t name the company you are going to and do not say it is a competitor of your present company. Knowing you are going to a competitor could also spark a trade secrets suit.
Don’t say anything bad about the company or anyone in the company. This letter is going to end up in your personnel file. Even if you are leaving due to a dispute, your resignation letter is not the place to air your gripes. Remember that anything you commit to writing will end up in your personnel file and it will live there forever.
Do not give a reason for leaving. Unless you can truthfully offer a wholly innocuous reason for leaving…like you are moving to another city, you are leaving the workforce to raise kids, or you have found work that doesn’t require a hard commute…don’t say why you are leaving. First of all, anything you say can be used against you, either in a lawsuit or in a reference. Second…and most important…it is none of your employer’s business.
How to explain it
Despite your best intentions to keep it quiet, your co-workers are going to find out you are leaving. And some of them are going to want to know where you are going. Don’t tell them, particularly before you leave. Don’t, in fact, tell your co-workers anything you do not want your supervisor, HR department or the company’s legal counsel to know.
“I can’t say right now,” is a good response to the query “Where are you going?” Or “Oh, no place special…just a change of pace…”
But what if your supervisor is doing the asking? Or an HR rep? They may be frantically scouring your personnel file looking for your Non-Disclosure or Confidentiality Agreement and trying to ascertain if your change of employment might violate one or both of them. Just say nothing.
Resist the temptation to “smooth things over,” especially if there are others present or if the conversation is being recorded. Most people will not run up against this kind of thing, but it does happen, so it is best to be prepared. Without a court order compelling you to tell your employer where you are going to work next, you do not need to tell.
Why the secrecy? Because, unless your new position is in a field completely unrelated to your present employment, revealing that you are taking a job with a competitor can make your present employer fearful of the sanctity of his trade secrets. You don’t know any trade secrets? Well, if you know how a company does something, who its suppliers and/or customers are, who they have done business with in the past or are wooing for the future…if you know what kinds of materials are shipped in or who the company gets mail from or how they acquire new clients…then you, my friend, know information the company may want to protect from falling into the hands of their competitors.
Counter offers
When your boss gets your letter of resignation, you can pretty much assume you will be called in for a chat. That “chat” can range from a friendly little talk wishing you luck to a screaming fest and anything in between. You might even get the offer of a counter offer, if you will just tell your boss what the new company has offered you. BEWARE!
A counter offer is attractive…flattering, even…but danger can be lurking below the surface of the offer. First of all, they aren’t going to take your word for the offer, they are going to want to see your offer letter. The minute you hand it over, you have revealed who your new employer is, opening the can of worms mentioned above.
Secondly, if a company only recognizes your value to them when you are about to scamper out the door, this is not a good thing. It is not unheard of for a company to make a counter offer to a key employee who is resigning, only to lay that person off six months later when the critical projects have all been reassigned…because the counter included a promotion or an assistant…with the employee’s help on the hand-offs.
Even if your company wouldn’t do such an underhanded thing, there is something wrong with your relationship and a raise or promotion won’t make those problems go away. You may think it will, but if you are underpaid or your talents underutilized, the conditions that allowed that to happen aren’t changing just because you got more money or a new title. The corporate culture that created the problem of your not being recognized doesn’t change just because you are now getting a fatter pay packet.
Cleaning out your space
Some companies are downright paranoid about exiting employees. The minute a resignation is submitted, security shows up at the employee’s workspace with a bunch of empty boxes and before you can sneeze, the poor guy is whisked out the door.
It is therefore wise to clear your personal items out of your workspace before submitting your resignation, especially if you have a lot of things security might mistake for belonging to the company, like books and electronic gadgets. Even if your company is too small to have security, no company is too small to have bosses who are nasty pieces of work who will shout you out the door, leaving you no opportunity to clear your desk.
You may think your boss, who is a sweetie, would never do such a thing, but don’t bet the farm on it…people can behave in unexpected ways when they interpret your letter of resignation as a personal rejection or betrayal.
Don’t take a short-timer’s attitude
The company still employs you…make your performance over your last two weeks exemplary. It can never hurt for people to remember you as a pleasant, professional person who worked hard right up to that last minute. Leave with a smile on your face…they don’t need to know why you’re smiling, it is enough that you are.
Next: Organizing that job search
You can find more of Violet at http://sweetvioletsa.blogspot.com/ and http://svcooks.blogspot.com/
by: Sweet Violet
Tags: acceptance letter, CV, job hunting, job interview, letter of resignation, offer letter, resignation, resigning, resume, salary negotiation, thank you letter, unemployed
