“HOW YOU COME IN IS JUST AS IMPORTANT AS HOW YOU GO OUT.”
A mentor of mine said to me several years ago, “how you come in is just as important as how you go out”, and it will forever be an important professional pillar for me. Resigning from a job is one of the more difficult things most people will do in their career and approaching it with tact and grace is critical to your professional (and personal!) brand.
This is especially important in our little world of legal recruiting, where many people know each other and can call for recommendations, references, or ideas. Maintaining a positive reputation is always critical, even with firms or colleagues that you no longer work with (or even hope to never work with again) - it’s no secret that BigLaw legal professionals (and employees and almost any other industry) switch jobs often. And you might even want to get back in the same firm sometime in the future.
Twenty years ago, I never thought I would be reengaging with someone I worked with in 2007, but here I am trying to connect with them as a client. How they remember me from 2007 is critical to our relationship, almost 20 years later. Don’t lose sight of the importance of long-term connections.
In this blog post, I share some advice I have learned as a former people manager in my roles as Director of Recruiting and other managerial positions, as well as from my own personal resignation experience as an employee. Whether a job change is weeks or years away, these are important tips to keep in mind to ensure you exit in way that maintains your strong professional reputation.
Give reasonable notice — generally two weeks, and more if you can. When people find a new job, they are excited about the change and ready to move on ASAP. Usually you will want to take a week off, in between jobs, and your new employer wants you to start yesterday. All these things can lead to a very condensed notice period, negatively affecting your professional brand. Be honest with your new/potential employer early on in the recruiting process on how soon you could realistically start and 99% of the time, they are willing to accommodate your reasonable timeline. If you want to take a week or a few days off (which I strongly recommend!), work that in to your timeline, and not at the detriment of your departing employer. Finally, when you have made the decision to take a new job, share your resignation with your manager as soon as possible. Even one or two days more notice, beyond two weeks, can be impactful to your current manager and teammates.
Don’t “check-out” once you resign. When you resign from a job, especially a difficult one, it is normal to feel a strong sense of relief and desire to just not care anymore. Don’t let this mindset take over, again at the expense of your professional brand. Meet with your manager shortly after you resign (they will probably need a few hours to process things), and work with them to create a transition plan. Then work hard to fulfill whatever is needed in this plan and make sure you leave detailed notes and files on your projects and responsibilities. Not only will this matter to your manager, but more to your teammates, who will likely have to take on more responsibility after you go.
Doing this work to set your team up for success before you depart will go a long way in maintaining a positive relationship with those former colleagues - people remember things like that! And certainly remember when the opposite happens and a departing employee throws in the towel.
Maintain a consistent story, even if it’s not the full story. I have certainly had jobs that when I resigned, I wanted to tell anyone that would listen to me all the things wrong with the organization and the real reason why I was leaving. Thankfully, my mind got ahead of my mouth, and I realized that was going to do more harm than good. It is important to be honest (in a professional manner) with your manager or HR contact about what you liked and didn’t like about the job or organization, and what ultimately led you to leave, but those conversations are likely not something you should share with your teammates and other colleagues. With your teammates and other colleagues, keep it diplomatic — “growth opportunity”, “more responsibility”, “promotion in title”, “more money” — because after you leave you don’t want your personal workplace gripes to be the watercooler topic of discussion. And if you tell one person the “real reason” and keep it guarded with others, you’ll create more gossip that’s not worthwhile.
Of course, every individual situation is unique and your resignation might look different. But I hope these general insights are helpful for you as you think about your professional brand and how job resignation/transition affects it.
