|
Job
Seeker Resources
Need some professional
advice? Here are 20 fact-filled articles to help you compete in today's
fierce employment market:
Resumes
Ten Keys to a Dynamite Resume
Resume Design Tips and Template
A
Stronger Resume To Increase Your Odds
Choosing
a Resume Format: Summary vs. Chronological
Beefing
Up an Anemic Resume
The
Dangers of Resume Overkill
Interviewing
The
Secret to Interview Success
Don't
Talk Yourself Out of a Job
How
to Answer Interview Questions
What
to Ask the Interviewer
Four
Classic
Interview
Questions—and
How to Prepare for Them
Discussing
the Subject of Money
Career
Decisions
How
to Evaluate a Job Offer
What
Does the New Job Really Pay?
Salary
Negotiation Techniques
Intelligent
Job-Changing
Strategy
Career
Strategy: It Pays to Diversify
Transition
The
Proper Way to Resign
How
to Leave a Job Gracefully
Resignation
or Retaliation?
|
Your
Resignation: Beware the Retaliatory Strike
By Bill Radin
If your
intention to make a job change is sincere, and nothing will change your decision
to leave, you should still keep up your guard.
Why? Because unless you know how to diffuse your current employer’s
retaliation, you may end up psychologically wounded, or right back at the job
you wanted to leave.
The best
way to shield yourself from the inevitable mixture of emotions surrounding the
act of submitting your resignation is to remember that employers follow a
predictable, three-stage pattern when faced with a resignation:
Tactic #1: Your boss will express his shock. “You sure picked a
fine time to leave! Who’s going to finish the work we started?” he might
say.
The
implication is that you’re irreplaceable. The company might as well ask,
“How will we ever live without you?”
To answer this assertion, you can reply, “If I were run over by a truck on my
way to work tomorrow, I feel that somehow, this company would survive.”
Tactic #2: Your boss will start to probe. “Who’s the new
company? What sort of position did you accept? What are they paying you?”
Here you
must be careful not to disclose too much information, or appear too
enthusiastic. Otherwise, you run the risk of feeding your current employer with
ammunition he can use against you later, such as, “I’ve heard some pretty
terrible things about your new company” or, “They’ll make everything look
great until you actually get there. Then you’ll see what a sweat shop that
place really is.”
Tactic #3: Your boss will make you an offer to try and keep you
from leaving. “You know that raise you and I were talking about a few months
back? Well, I forgot to tell you: We were just getting it processed
yesterday.”
To this
you can respond, “Gee, today you seem pretty concerned about my happiness and
well-being. Where were you yesterday, before I announced my intention to
resign?”
It may
take several days for the three stages to run their course, but believe me,
sooner or later, you’ll find yourself engaged in conversations similar to
these. More than once, candidates have called me after they’ve resigned, to
tell me that their old company followed the three-stage pattern exactly as I
described it. Not only were they better prepared to diffuse a counteroffer
attempt, they found the whole sequence to be almost comical in its
predictability.
|
