Reasons for Leaving

What are Reasons for Leaving?

When leaving your current position and moving on to a new position, your current and future boss will likely want to know the reasons for leaving your job. The current boss is interested in knowing the reason for quitting your job, while the future boss wants to know the reasons for leaving your previous employment and may use that to determine your suitability for the future job.

Typically, job applicants may be required to list the reasons for leaving their job on job applications, or they will be asked to explain their reasons during face-to-face interviews. Job applicants should figure out how to state their reasons for leaving their current or previous position before they begin their job search to ensure the reasons are consistent from reasons given by the current employer to the reasons mentioned during job applications and interviews.

Here is a great template for a resignation letter, one that can help your job transition to be as smooth as possible.

Good Reasons for Leaving

There are legitimate reasons why a person may leave employment and look for a new opportunity in another company. The candidate should aim to give genuine reasons why they are looking for a new opportunity. Here are some of the good reasons to state for leaving employment:

1. Career change

It is common for employees to move between jobs and careers during their working life as they try to find jobs where they can develop and grow their skills. The job change may be from one industry to another or in line with the courses they pursued in college.

An employee may also mention career change as the reason for leaving when they are leaving employment to go back to school for advanced training in a different field. An employer will likely view the career change move in a positive way, and it will give the employee an opportunity to develop their skills.

2. Looking for career growth

Some careers offer more opportunities for growth than others, depending on the company’s organizational structure. It means that an employee may stay in the same position for a long time, and the work process may start getting boring. If it is difficult to change departments or move up the levels, an employee may experience a growing desire to move to a new company that offers greater opportunities for advancement and changing job responsibilities.

3. Organizational restructuring

During periods of economic hardship, most companies tend to implement certain measures to minimize their expenditures as a way of surviving the economic downturn. Part of the efforts of dealing with the economic hardship may be laying off some employees whose services may not be required during the recovery period.

Cutting down the number of employees reduces the team’s overall morale and productivity because the fewer number of employees needs to perform the roles of the other staff who’ve been laid off, which increases employee turnover.

4. Better opportunity

The emergence of a new opportunity to work in a different work environment, earn better compensation or get a more challenging work process is another good reason for leaving jobs. It is reasonable for any employee to go for a new opportunity that offers better terms than their current work.

Also, getting an opportunity to work with some of the largest companies in the industry allows employees to experience a more challenging environment, possibly a better work culture, and sometimes better pay.

However, some employers may view an employee to be too focused on money if the only reason for moving jobs is a pay increase. The reason should be combined with another reason, such as career growth, a new work environment, or career change.

5. Health reasons

An employee may also leave employment due to health reasons and the need for a flexible schedule that will allow them to attend doctor’s appointments. It may also apply when an employee needs to attend to a sick family member and is forced to leave employment to become the primary caregiver.

Pregnant women may also leave employment when their due date approaches to take up full-time parenting until a time when the kids can take care of themselves. It means that they will be absent for a longer period, and the employer will need to get a replacement sooner so that the company’s activities are not affected. If the employee is looking to re-enter the workforce, they should indicate that the circumstances have changed so that they are now able to focus on the new job.

Bad Reasons for Leaving

1. Breaking the law

No employer would be interested in hiring an employee with a criminal record. If the grounds for arrest are understandable, you should tell the recruiter the truth about circumstances surrounding the arrest since they might find out when conducting background checks on candidates.

2. Terrible boss

Some employees may attempt to bad mouth their former bosses when asked about their former employer. Such reasons will put off the recruiters since there is a chance that the employee will also bad-mouth them in the future when hired elsewhere. Job applicants should avoid talking ill about their former bosses since this will portray them in a negative light.

Additional resources

Thank you for reading CFI’s guide to the reasons for leaving a job. To keep advancing your career, the additional resources below will be useful:

• Employee Morale
• Employee Turnover Rate
• Sense of Purpose at Work
• Severance Pay
• See all career resources