What to Say in an Exit Interview

Author: Rebecca Zucker

Given that most people will hold multiple jobs over the course of their professional lives, you may have the opportunity to participate in an exit interview at one or more points during your career. Not all organizations conduct exit interviews, but if you do have the opportunity to do one, it is a chance to provide a helpful point of view to the organization so that leadership can learn and continuously improve for current and future employees. Although the previous chapter warned about oversharing during your exit interview, depending on your situation, being professional in giving your employer some constructive feedback could benefit both you and the people you leave behind.

Whether you are leaving to pursue a new opportunity, escape a toxic leader or environment, seek better work-life balance, make a career change, or all of the above, you don’t want to make the exit interview an emotional venting session. Be calm and constructive, sticking to the facts while being both open and direct in your responses. You’ll want to include the following information in your feedback.

Your reason for leaving

This information is fairly straightforward. Perhaps you were approached, unsolicited, by an executive recruiter with an exciting new role that was also a step up in title and pay. Or maybe you are relocating to be closer to family or to support your partner’s new job. Or perhaps you are burned out and need a break to reflect on what you really want in your career and life. Your reasons are helpful for the organization to know and can allow the exit interviewer to probe further in the appropriate areas.

How well your job was structured and if you had the appropriate tools to succeed

To what extent was your job meaningful and motivating, allowing you to do the work you most enjoy? Did your manager create opportunities for you to use your strengths? You’ll also want to share the extent to which your manager supported you and helped you clear obstacles and whether you had the appropriate resources to do your job well. These include things like budget, people, and tools, such as the appropriate software to make your job easier.

Whether you had opportunities to learn and grow

According to a Gallup study, 32% of people leave their jobs because of a lack of career advancement or promotion opportunities. You’ll want to share the extent to which you could see a viable career path in the organization and if you were given opportunities to gain new skills and experiences during your tenure. These opportunities could include stretch assignments and high-stakes projects that enabled you to grow in your career. You should also share whether your manager regularly provided actionable feedback (both positive and improvement feedback) that allowed you to learn continuously and get better at your job.

How you feel about your manager and other leaders

The exit interview is an opportunity to recognize good managers and other leaders, highlighting what made them so good, and to identify less-great ones. If your manager empowered you to make decisions and showed good emotional intelligence, that’s helpful information for the organization. Just as helpful is knowing about those who may be detracting from a positive working environment or who are even a contributing factor to your decision to leave. Such a person may be a boss who demonstrates bullying behavior or manages by instilling fear. In particular, when multiple exit interviews echo the same negative feedback, the organization has even more incentive to act on it. Leadership might provide the manager in question with coaching to help increase their awareness and mitigate unproductive behaviors or, in more extreme cases, launch an investigation that may lead to further action. Rather than thinking of sharing this information as tattling on anyone, consider it as shining a light on a problem to be solved to make things better for your soon-to-be-former colleagues and the organization’s future employees.

What you liked most about your job and the company

Include positive elements of your experience at the organization—what you liked and appreciated most about the job, your team, and the organization. Just as people need to hear positive feedback to know what they should continue doing, so do organizations. This information could include specific benefits offered, investments made in your learning and development, or an aspect of the company culture that you most valued.

Your top recommendations for improvement

Identify the top one or two areas that could benefit from improvement in the organization. These may also be the factors that would have kept you from leaving (if there are any). Your recommendations may include things like more flexible work options, more competitive compensation (data is always useful here if you are able to share this), a culture that is more welcoming of dissenting views, and better upward feedback mechanisms.

Taking the time to share the preceding information can help focus the organization’s improvement efforts. Good leaders make things better for others, and the exit interview is a small but important way to contribute to this aim.

Rebecca Zucker is an executive coach and a founding partner at Next Step Partners, a leadership development firm. Her clients have included Amazon, Clorox, Morrison Foerster, Norwest Venture Partners, the James Irvine Foundation, and high-growth technology companies like DocuSign and Dropbox. You can follow her on X/Twitter @rszucker.