Exit interview

[MiamiWindMachine]

I’m about to leave my job after five years. I was headhunted, so it wasn’t that I was particularly unhappy or desperate to leave - I just got a very good offer. I have a great relationship with my boss, who is disappointed I’m leaving, but understands that it’s a great opportunity. I’m glad to be leaving on good terms with her and the team and will only have good things to say about them in my exit interview.

However, I don’t feel the same way about HR. I know that, as a sector, it doesn’t exactly have a reputation for attracting the best and brightest, but this is genuinely the worst team I’ve ever come across in my career. I had to deal with the then Assistant UK Manager a couple of years back and she was robotic, utterly lacking in empathy and made several mistakes. She’s since been promoted to UK Manager 🙄

As you can tell, I have no time for her, but it isn’t about personal dislike. The whole department is run extremely poorly. Everything is very “computer sez no”; there’s nothing approaching common sense in any of their decisions. Last year, they opened the annual review feedback system - with a fixed window of two weeks - on 12 December. Our annual review deadline was Boxing Day. They used the same system to open an important survey on 17 December. It’s like Christmas and New Year - which in my experience roll around roughly every year - and all the associated disruption don’t exist in their world. They must have had complaints, because they moved the annual review forward by six weeks without a word, meaning you were buggered if you’d happened to book those two weeks off. There have been many other organisational issues too.

I wanted to say all this in my exit interview. But now I find they’re sending the most junior member of the team possible to do it. Not even the Assistant Manager; I’m essentially getting the secretary. I feel insulted, and it’s just another sign of their lack of interest, or even general critical thinking. They haven’t even bothered to find out whether the company is desperate to keep me or thrilled to be rid of me.

As I say, I wanted to talk up my boss and leave on a high note. But I feel like I have to get all this out there. Maybe it won’t do any good, but at least I’ve got closure.

WWYD?

If it were me, I would praise your manager, but bite my lip about HR. You never know if the new role didn't work out and you wanted to come back. The HR manager might be reviewing the applications and weed your one out. Good luck with the new job.

Go to the interview and talk up your boss, but also give them a written letter with the fulker comments.

Say what you've said here. Why not?

Will it change anything?
Will it make you feel better?

I don’t think it does make any difference, but if you praise your manager and ignore the rest, they may get the unspoken message.

Make a statement and refuse an exit interview on the basis of past HR experience and believing it will not be an effective use of time.

Write your boss a thank you email details why they have been so important to you and copy in their line manager or whoever would be most relevant

Exit interviews are not compulsory-make a statement by declining it. No good comes of criticising HR.

I'd keep it to myself. I recently left a role where my manager was an absolute horror and I would have loved to have told someone on my way out but you never know where you might bump into them again if you are in the same industry or if you may find yourself back at your old company in a few years. Getting it all out doesn't help you at all. It may help the company if someone acts on your feedback (but honestly it doesn't sound much like they are going to from your post). Not at all worth it. Exit interviews are such a trap!

Why do you want the manager if they are so useless? They aren't going to change based on what you say. Maybe it will be better to have a different person who has no skin in the game
If you think you might want to work there again then be very careful.
If you definitely don't then I don't see what you've got to lose by giving some constructive criticism. I doubt much will change though. Our HR dept is similarly useless, it seems to be a common theme

Is there any upside for you in saying these things. There is potentially plenty of downside if your new HR boss is best mates with your existing HR manager, or you find yourself applying for a job when they have moved to the same company, or you set up in Consultancy and are pitching for work, etc etc etc. Unless there are real benefits to you then I would leave well alone. You are leaving so let them sort out their issues.

Don't do the exit interview. You don't have to.

I was retiring so I felt I could be honest and tell them the truth about my new line manager. I don’t know if they cared but I do know I was never invited back to anyone else’s leaving party.

Because if the new job doesn’t work out it’ll be HR she’ll have to speak to when she comes back.
I’ll let you figure out why that wouldn’t be a good thing!

Why are you so important that your views upon leaving need the CEO, Jesus or Rishi Sinai to come and hear them?

We don’t really care about your exit interview we just want to make sure you feel like you’ve had chance to have your say, aren’t going to disclose anything that puts us at risk of being sued and one in every thousand someone might make a good suggestion we can implement.

Oh really? And why is that?

Look, maybe you’re happy to be fobbed off and treated like you don’t matter. Maybe you don’t care and are happy to think “Awwh, it’s not their fault they got sent to do the interview” - probably congratulating yourself on how #bekind you are for being so magnanimous. But frankly I value myself, my performance and my skill set enough to feel I deserve more than being fobbed off with the most junior team member available. If you don’t value yourself professionally, that’s your issue, not mine.

I resigned once before. My managers worked over the weekend to put together a better package to make me stay. The only reason they haven’t this time is because they haven’t got the budget to match my salary increase. So yes, I think it would be a good idea if they didn’t send the secretary; for them as much as me.

Oh, we’ve found the useless HR “manager”! Not that you’re exactly an endangered species…

Don't do it if you don't want to. You seem stressed about it - just go to your new job, who cares what happens to the old place? You won't be working there anymore.

Praise your boss at the exit interview. There is no point criticising HR in what is essentially a HR exercise.

If you feel strongly about it have an off the record chat with someone senior about how useless HR has been and how it has affected team morale or whatever.

I was head-hunted for my current job. When I left my last company I was invited to an exit interview. As it was the first time I'd ever had one I didn't realise what a time-wasting, tick box exercise they are.

I'd been there for six years. My Line Manager said he couldn't be bothered to travel down so he got the Sales Director to do it as he was already in the office.

I wanted to finish off one document so whoever took over my role knew what I had been working on and what was needed.

Nope, SD couldn't/wouldn't wait as he had another meeting to go to.

Exit interview lasted 6 minutes including walking to a spare meeting room.

Went to the pub for a few beers and who was there? Yep, fucking SD. I knew he was a wanky liar but I would have appreciated at least a slight pretence of honesty. I wouldn't have been bothered if he'd said he was off for a beer. Twat.

One of my team left recently, gave honest, robust exit interviews with the directors of the business, and her reputation, which was already high, has improved further since she left.

She would be welcomed back with open arms.

Exit interviews are a tick in the box.

HR are sending a junior member because they don't care what you think. They'll write it down, file it away and it will be forgotten about.

Exit interviews are a box ticking waste of time but the fact that you've taken it so personally that a junior colleague has been asked to do the interview, doesn't exactly put you in a good light.
I've more years than I like to admit in headhunting and our clients know that the way senior executives work with and view their junior colleagues is critical to success, it's an important part of our assessment criteria.

Exit interviews are an utterly pointless make-work for HR.
I always refuse to participate in that shite.

Why on earth would you complain about the HR department to a member of the HR team during an exit interview. I value myself too much to waste my time on such an exercise.

This is unfair. Stating that a more senior colleague should be handling a task is not treating a junior colleague badly. As I’ve stated, I have a very good relationship with my boss - but there are plenty of meetings she wouldn’t delegate to me, and others our VP wouldn’t delegate to her. This isn’t a case of either us being disrespected; it’s purely a case of knowing who should handle what tasks and when.