Suky talks about the best course of action when you’ve been let go or decide to resign your position for a new one.
Transcription
Hi I’m Suky from Professional Selection. Today I’d like to talk about how not to burn a bridge when leaving your current employer. For the purpose of what I’m talking about today it really doesn’t matter whether you’ve resigned to move on to another position or whether unfortunately you’ve been let go. The fact of the matter remains any industry is a small industry so everybody knows everybody, and in particular within the recruitment world.
So what should you do? Yes absolutely if you have been let go you are going to be hurt. Whether you’re expecting or not, whether you agree with the reasons your employer has given you. How you conduct yourself after that is really going to follow you within your industry, simply because people talk. So if you have been let go, understand why. Actually ask your line manager what it was and learn from it. If they’ve given you some constructive feedback, I would seriously suggest that you listen to it. There’s going to be parts of it that’s going to resonate with you and there’s going to be parts that don’t resonate with you.
Either way thank them and be extremely professional. Once you have left that company do not badmouth the company or the employer or your team, okay. Nobody likes somebody that takes no ownership and nobody wants to work with or hire somebody that throughout their interview process all they’re doing is bashing their former colleagues and employer. Because to me certainly that says you take no accountability for your own actions and you’re playing the blame game.
So what should you do? Again, be honest. Tell your potential new employer what you learned from the previous experience.
Now that could be something simple as something you could have done differently, and if given the situation again, how you would have done something different. So what you’ve effectively learned from it. By doing that you’re showing your employer that you are coachable and you do learn.
So at the end of the day, everybody goes through life, and at some stage most people are let go of. Its how you handle it, what you do thereafter and what you’ve learned from it. So stay professional regardless of what the line manager has done or not done to you. You can only control what you do. So stay professional, carry on, learn from the feedback that they gave you. Implement anything that you feel resonates, let go of anything that you completely disagree with, but do not take that baggage into your next career move, company, whatever the case may be.
As always I’m sure there’s loads of other opinions on this, would love to hear your feedback if you leave a comment below and I look forward to speaking to you soon.
