Most of the people I talk to say 2 weeks or 3 weeks notice, but I had always heard that notice should be equivalent to the amount of annual vacation you currently have.
The theory being, if your company values you enough that you get 4 weeks vacation, you should give 4 weeks notice. If they value you so little that you get 1 week, 1 week notice. No vacation, no notice - McDonald’s or something like that.
I go for “Professional” positions - minimum 1 month, 2 weeks is a slap in the face in those circumstances.
Other than that, I go for 2 weeks notice or how long in advance do you know your personal schedule, whichever is shortest (ie if they’re posting the schedules one week in advance, that’s all I’d give 'em).
Walking out w/o notice is one of the few things that will almost automatically make me re-consider selecting you for a position.
IMHO. YMMV Not available in Canada. Shipping/handling extra.
I go for “professional” positions as well, and I will never give more than 2 weeks ever again.
I quit a job about 5 years ago that I felt really bad about quitting. I had only been there for 9 months, and I was the lead programmer on a critical project. However, I had responded to an ad in the paper almost on a whim, because it listed a set of qualifications I fit, and quoted a salary a full 50% above what I was currently making. It turned out to be an ad from a recruiter, and when I explained my experience to him, he basically told me I was impressively underpaid. He got me the job, and so I quit the old job. I gave them a month notice because I felt guilty. Let me tell you, that month was hell.
Start out with the president of the company walking around to everyone on my project the day after I quit and handing out $500.00 bonuses. Yes, I understand, I quit and therefore wasn’t getting a bonus, but goddamn it, at least TRY to be subtle about them. Add in not really wanting to do the job since I was leaving anyway. Add in being made to feel like a jerk for leaving. It was a miserable. I’m never giving more than 2 weeks ever again.
Athena you had a shitty boss (did you need me to tell you that?) that doesn’t translate to me that the fault was the amount of notice. They’d have made any length of time a living hell.
For a professional position, if my employee gives me 2 weeks notice on the 1st, their last day is the 15th. I call in an ad, post the position etc, the very quickest I’m going to be able to Start to interview folks is most likely around the 10 -14, even if I’ve sped the process up, so I won’t be ready to even offer the job to some one until after the original employee is gone. Then they have to give notice etc, so it’s possible that I’ll be without that position for an extended period of time. That’s the rationale for my response.
repeat IMHO, YMMV etc etc.
Well, by law, you don’t have to give any notice. It’s just common courtesy to give at least two week’s notice. You could, pretty much, walk out whenever you want. The only instance where you couldn’t walk out is when your leaving causes the company you work for a direct loss.
Like, if you’re a truck driver, and you decide to quit in the middle of your route, leaving the truck out in the desert, still full of merchandise. The merchandise is looted, and the truck is stolen, stripped, and sold for parts. That, you could actually be sued for.
Two weeks is fine and generally speaking nobody’s going to hold a two week notice against you. In my industry, and I imagine some others, common practice with regard to certain professionals is for the company to pay you for the two weeks but tell you to leave the day you give your notice.
In every industry, there’s a standard amount of time.
So if you call up a couple headhunters in your field and schmooze them, they’ll tell you.
When you resign, you want to do everying right - give the right amount of notice, work really hard the last few weeks, and everyone will appreciate you for being classy. It will help if you need a reference in the future.
The only exception is that in some situations, there will certainly be unpleasantness, such as when you are taking customers with you. In those cases, it might be better to give the minimum notice that’s legally required - which is often very little.
Generally speaking, proper notice is one pay period. So, if you have 15-day pay periods (as my employer does), you should give notice 15 days in advance. However, if your employer needs time to find and train your replacement, they may require a longer lead time. If you have an employment agreement, read that for specifics.
Of course, YMMV.
Robin
I’m a contract aerospace engineer. According to my contract, I can quit or be fired with no notice at all. I’ve never been fired and I (and most everyone I’ve worked with) always try to give a couple weeks notice as a courtesy, but in my field, no notice is standard for contractors.
I agree with the above posters:
2 weeks is a good general rule.
More than 2 weeks is proper in many positions.
Less than 2 weeks is rarely acceptable.
Of course, if the working conditions are intolerable, you may walk out at any time. But you will be “burning your bridges.”
So, nobody ever heard of notice equal to the amount of current vacation? Wonder where I got that from?? It makes sense.
It seems like there’s some employers who want you to give enough notice so they can hire someone. Well, duh, that’s not going to happen. The notice is to get things in order and let everyone know what the status is on your projects, not get somebody hired and trained to do the job. Sheesh.
I would give my employer the same amount of advance notice that they would give me in the event they wanted me to leave.
…And everybody lived happily ever after.
No, that’s not going to happen either. As soon as you give your two weeks, all sorts of unsavory BS busy work will be dumped on your desk. Your boss knows full well that you plan on sitting at your desk for the next two weeks perfecting your eyes-open-sleeping technique and using the company xerox machine for personal use. So he’s not about to entrust you with anything that’s going to move & shake the company.
Granted I’ve been in only two previous jobs, but I was in each of them for ten+ years and saw a LOT of people give their two weeks and subsequently get treated like crap for two weeks.
The only time I’ve been in that position of leaving by resignation (and catching them by surprise) an organization, I truly hoped to build a business relationship with that company in the future. And I’ve been racking my brains (such as they are) to try and remember whether I gave them a month or two weeks.
I do remember that I expected them to spit me out that day and they surprised me by asking me to work it through and leave as much supporting info as I could. Not surprisingly, they threw in the towel about six months after I left. This had nothing to do with my leaving; it was just something I could see coming down the pike and they helped induce in me the resolve to create my own company.
Ultimately, equations vary, but the two week standard almost always works.
In my experience, this answer is 99% accurate. Two caveats, however. First, laws vary from state to state. Second, if you actually have an employment contract, either in the form of a written document you signed or in the form of an employee manual, then you may have bound yourself to a specific notice period.
Further, if you are an officer or director of the company, you have a fiduciary duty to the company, and while you are free to resign, you have to be sure that doing so will not place the company in a bind. I have seen this used as a “hammer” to keep a nominal officer in his position for 3 months under threat of a lawsuit by his employer.
I agree that this is IMHO-ish, and would say two weeks is standard. That said, I think any time you give notice, you should be prepared to be asked to leave on the spot. In this case, especially if you needed the money, giving lots of advanced notice can really hurt you.
I left a large consulting firm to join a dot com (big mistake of course) and though I knew I was leaving for a month, I waited because a friend of mine who did the same thing was asked to leave on the spot when she gave a month and a half notice. Surprisingly, I was treated a lot better than she was, and I felt like I gave them quality work up to the day I left, and I even volunteered to come back and train my replacement AFTER I was at the new company to maintain a good relationship with the firm.
What really pissed me off though is that the human resources person spread all kinds of inflammatory remarks to my former bosses after all the free good will I provided and essentially burned my bridges for me. Apparently, when she asked me to be honest in my exit interview, and I said, “Honestly, this company underpays as a whole based on what I have seen, and I can make $25,000 more with greater responsibility at a more innovative company” that somehow got turned into her telling my bosses that I was “screwed out of raises” and all kinds of other things I NEVER said. That is one of the reasons I feel a special place is reserved in Hell for most HR people…but since I’m not in the Pit, I’ll shut up now…
Well as far as that goes, it doesn’t matter how long of a notice people give, does it?
Most professional positions the notice period is contractually spelled out, although I’m not sure if you can legally be bound by such a contract. It varies in different locales.
I work it the opposite way. If I’m changing jobs, either I’m trading up significantly or the current environment is horrible. Either way, I decide what’s best for me, then decide what I think is a fair notice period. If it’s a great new career position that has to have me on Monday, then I’ll be there on Monday. Depending on the relationship with the current company, I would and have offered to work a few weekends, take phone calls during the work day and otherwise work out a transition to minimize the impact of my immediate departure. If it’s a bad relationship with the current company, I’m out the door and if there’s a problem with the final pay/vacation time, I’ll just walk away from it.
Call me cynical, but after getting whacked by being on the wrong team in a merger and management run a major corporation into bankruptcy, I’m a mercenary. Few companies are loyal to their employees, and unless I work for one, then there is no reason for me to have more loyalty than a mercenary.
Amount of notice give SHOULD be tied DIRECTLY to severence pay. If your company fired you and would give you 1 month that is the notice you should give.
No severence pay, no notice.
Why should anyone give a company more consideration than they would give you?
It also depends on if you ever want to come back.
My company will put you are not eligible for rehire if you don’t give two weeks AND sign a non compete clause. For cry-sakes we are a hotel. Is it reasonable to expect a bellman to quit and not take another job as one.
Also a good idea is to back date your resignation letter. Once you send it thru they can let you go ASAP NOT pay you for those two weeks STILL mark you down as in eligible for rehire and you WON’T get unemployment if your other employer retracts his offer. This has happened a lot in my industry.
My last three jobs I’ve been walked the day I gave two weeks. It is really a smart thing to do. I have found even low level employees don’t work much during those two weeks so why have them?
For those who want employees to give two weeks or more they should be up in H/R telling them to PAY their fired employees equal severence. It IS only fair.
Also in your resignation letter never get specfic use "Due to Opportunites Elsewhere my last day employed with the ACME CO will be Nov 28, 2001.Thank them give your current address so they can mail you your COBRA, and last pay. Spell out any severence they give you in clear terms.
Final word GET A LETTER OF RECOMMENDATION from your boss, H/R or someone above you in the company.
Many companies will only be to happy to see you go (especially if you are a high paid employee). They will be nice THEN once they see how much work you did get mad and your reference (for future) may go dry. They may even put bad things in your file to prevent rehire.
Should this happen having a letter of recommendation from your boss will make it very easy for you to sue them should they bad mouth you later.
And I have seen this happen a lot.
Not necessarily. I quit my job with no notice whatsoever in April and was, a few months later, re-approached and directly asked if I wanted to come back.
I’m currently employed in a limited time contract (set to expire at the end of this month :eek:), and have been looking for a permanent job for the past year, with no success. I was given to understand that two weeks notice was the standard acceptable length of advance time.
Recently, though, I made special arrangements. I interviewed with a place that was clearly anxious to hire someone as soon as possible. In the hopes of making me a stronger candidate, I arranged to give only one week’s notice if I got that job…therefore I could start there sooner.
Unfortunately, it apparently wasn’t enough. But it did show me that sometimes you can make arrangements for shorter or longer durations than two weeks.