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- Quitting your job the right way is important so you don’t damage your future employment prospects.
- That’s especially true in a tight labor market, when relying on your network is so critical.
- As much as it might feel good to rage quit, there’s a better way, say career experts.
You might call Alan Stein a connoisseur of quitting.
Stein, who’s in his early 50s, has had 31 jobs. Other than a handful of instances where he got canned, Stein has given notice a couple of dozen times. That means he knows what it’s like to leave an employer well — and not so well.
“Disassociate your emotions from your actions. This is something I have not done well in my career, and I’m continuing to work on,” said Stein, CEO of Kadima Careers, which offers coaching for landing six-figure jobs.
The most basic reason to do this, he said, echoes the don’t-burn-a-bridge speech your parents delivered: “You very likely may come across several of these people that you work with in your future,” Stein told Business Insider.
In 2025, quitting might be something you only dream about when work piles up or you get the side-eye from your boss. Many employees are simply holding on to their jobs because, for the first time since 2021, there are more people in the US looking for work than there are open roles.
The lackluster job market is yet another reason that it pays to quit well. Here are three things to consider:
Don’t quit on a bad day
If you’re having a lousy time at work, don’t quit on a bad day, said Laura Labovich, who runs an outplacement firm in the Washington, DC, area.
“A lot of people run away from a bad workplace, but they have nothing to run towards,” she told Business Insider.
Instead, Labovich said, create a plan for leaving. Unless you’re in a toxic work environment, considering what you want to do next is often a lot easier while you still have a paycheck and benefits.
Sketching out a strategy before you pull the ripcord also doesn’t mean you have to stay forever. Most workers don’t. Younger baby boomers held an average of 12.9 jobs from ages 18 to 58, the Labor Department reported. It also found that the oldest millennials — those born in the early 1980s — had nine jobs, on average, from age 18 to their mid-30s.
Don’t go off message
If you’re heading for the door, it’s wise to show gratitude, thank your boss and others for the opportunity, and explain why the role might no longer be an ideal fit for you, said Jim Detert, a professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business Administration.
One way to frame it, he said, is to focus on advancement opportunities. That’s not threatening to those you’re leaving behind, and it allows them to say that there wasn’t a great fit for your growth or passions at your employer, Detert said.
“That doesn’t make people angry at you,” he told Business Insider.
Detert said that if you’re departing for a management position, for example, you can credit your boss with that by saying they’ve inspired you, by being a solid mentor, to go into leadership.
In any case, Detert said, it’s often wise to give credit.
“You can say things like, ‘The whole reason I’m at this stage now of being so ready for X, is that you have given me so many opportunities up to this point,'” Detert said.
Don’t throw bombs in an exit interview
An exit interview could be one of the last big things you do in your job. So, just as you want to consider how you leave things with your boss, it’s smart to do the same with an exit interview, Detert said.
He cautioned against firing off a litany of complaints about the organization. That’s because if leadership wasn’t listening to you before you said you were leaving, it’s unlikely to start doing so when you depart, Detert said.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a case where exit interviews were the basis of any meaningful change,” Detert said.
One reason, he said, is that HR staffers tend to conduct exit interviews, rather than senior execs. That means there’s a lower likelihood of a big payoff from carrying out “a therapeutic purge,” Detert said.
He said that in his many years of studying the impact of speaking out, there are two key considerations: Is it safe, and is it worthwhile? If you’re leaving, you don’t have to worry about a boss withholding a promotion, for example. Yet, Detert said, you still might meet colleagues at future employers. It’s another version of the don’t-burn-a-bridge idea.
“If you think that, ‘Now I’m leaving and it’s safer,’ you may be mistaken,” he said.
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