The Top 10 Exit Interview Questions to Ask Departing Employees

Exit interviews help you learn why your current employees are leaving and how you can improve your workplace. The feedback your organization can gain from exit interviews (or exit surveys) can be critical in lowering employee churn, and creating a better company culture.

Conducting effective exit interviews when employees leave your company is a crucial part of any retention strategy. Asking the right questions during these interviews can provide valuable insights into why employees choose to leave, what your company is doing well, and where there’s room for improvement.

In this article we’ll provide the 10 most important exit interview questions to ask departing staff. Asking thoughtful and strategic questions will help you gather constructive feedback to strengthen your organization.

Why Conduct Exit Interviews?

Before getting into the specific questions. let’s look at why exit interviews are so important for any organization

Understand reasons for turnover. Exit interviews give you the opportunity to learn first-hand what motivated the employee’s decision to leave. This is invaluable data that can shed light on potential weak spots in your retention strategies.
Gather constructive feedback. Well-designed exit interview questions allow you to collect honest, candid insights from departing staff on their experience in your organization. Their unfiltered feedback can help you improve processes, morale, and more.
Strengthen retention strategies By better understanding both weaknesses that push employees away, and strengths that you should double down on, you can retain your top talent over the long-term
Part ways on a positive note. Exit interviews are a chance to thank the employee for their contributions and leave them feeling valued. Even if they are leaving, they may share positive feedback with former colleagues.

The key is asking strategic questions that go beyond surface-level responses. Let’s look at 10 of the most important exit interview questions to incorporate.

The 10 Most Important Exit Interview Questions

1. What motivated you to start looking for a new position?

This open-ended question allows the employee to explain the initial catalyst for leaving in their own words. Listen closely for clues about issues that may have pushed them out the door from problems with management to lack of growth opportunities.

2. What could we have done differently to have encouraged you to stay?

This gives the employee a comfortable opportunity to highlight changes the company could implement to retain talent. Feedback may focus on compensation, work-life balance, management approaches, etc.

3. How well were you recognized for your contributions?

With this question, you’re gathering data around whether top performers feel valued and recognized for their work. Lack of recognition is a common reason employees start job hunting.

4. What did you like most about your job?

It’s just as important to understand strengths as weaknesses. Pay attention to the aspects they found most enjoyable and rewarding to gain insights into what works well in your company culture.

5. Was there anything lacking from our compensation and benefits package?

Candidates will often leave for better compensation. Your packages may not be competitive. This is a chance to learn if your pay and benefits meet employee expectations.

6. What skills and experiences gained here will help most in your new position?

You want to know what transferable skills and knowledge they gained during their tenure that helped land their new role. Identify strengths your organization excels at developing.

7. How effectively were any job concerns you raised addressed?

Employees shouldn’t be blindsided when top talent resigns. Gauge whether employees feel comfortable raising concerns and if your managers resolve issues satisfactorily.

8. Was your job what you expected when hired? Did it meet your expectations?

It’s important to set accurate expectations during the hiring process that align with the actual job duties. Assess whether reality matched the job they anticipated.

9. Would you consider working for us again in the future? Why or why not?

Even if they’ve resigned, keep the door open for potential boomerang employees. Learn whether they’d consider returning based on their experience working with your company.

10. Do you have any additional suggestions for improvement?

Open the floor for any final thoughts from the employee on changes that could be made. They may share outstanding complaints now that they’re leaving.

Best Practices for Conducting Exit Interviews

In addition to what you ask departing employees, you’ll also want to follow certain best practices for conducting productive exit interviews:

Choose unbiased interviewers. Select neutral HR staff or management not closely connected to the employee to avoid personal conflicts impacting responses.
Set expectations upfront. Explain that their candid feedback will be anonymized and help guide future improvements to put them at ease.
Interview consistently. Follow the same process and questions for every exit interview to allow for tracking trends over time.
Interview promptly. Schedule exit interviews on or before the employee’s last day to get the most accurate, thoughtful data.
Take detailed notes. Document responses thoroughly instead of relying on memory to reference long term.
Analyze results regularly. Review compiled exit interview responses at least quarterly to identify patterns of constructive feedback.
Thank participants. Express your gratitude for their time providing feedback and wish them well on their next career move.

Valuable Insights to Gather from Exit Interviews

The most important exit interview questions are designed to gather insights across the following key areas:

Reasons for dissatisfaction. What specific grievances or pain points ultimately motivated them to leave? Were there personality clashes, lack of work-life balance, limited advancement opportunities, etc?
Areas for improvement. What constructive feedback do they have on changes the company could make? Do they have thoughts on improving culture, work processes, compensation, or management approaches?
Reasons for satisfaction. What did they gain or enjoy most from their time at your company? Identify what unique value propositions you offer.
Potential retention strategies. Would alternative benefits, flexible work arrangements, management training, or other changes encouraged them to stay? Identify perks with high ROI.
Re-hiring former employees. Ask if they’d consider returning to provide insights into your alumni re-hiring or boomerang programs.

Exit interviews allow organizations to tap into the wisdom of departing employees and use their objective insights to build an exceptional workplace. Just be sure you’re prepared with strategic questions tailored to gather constructive details you can act on.

With some forethought, each exit interview presents an opportunity to gain a clearer understanding of your employees’ motivations and experiences. The feedback you gain allows your company to celebrate successes, remedy pain points, and retain your workforce over the long haul. Use these exit interview best practices to gather valuable insights from outgoing staff that help set your organization up for future success.

Exit interview question samples

When conducting an exit interview, it’s important to keep the exit survey limited to a set number of questions to ensure that your former employees complete them.

This is a great opportunity to not just learn about what’s causing employees to leave, but to also cultivate some ideas for how former employees think the company can be improved.

Below you’ll find an example of exit interview questions that you can use today.

What prompted you to seek other employment?
Prior to making your decision to leave, did you look into options that would make it possible for you to stay here?
How would you describe management at our company? Do you feel they adequately recognize employee contributions?
Were there any company policies you found difficult to understand?
Did you feel like your job description or responsibilities have changed since your initial hire? If so, in which ways? Were they welcome or unwelcome changes?
Were you given the tools, resources and work environment to be successful here? If not, what could have been improved to make it better?
What was your favorite part of working here?
What do you think our company could improve on?
Do you think making any specific workplace changes would improve employee morale?
Are there any concerns or issues around working at this company you’d like to share?
Is there anything else you’d like to add?

How long should an exit interview be?

An exit interview should be around 5-10 questions and take your former employee 30 minutes to an hour. These exit interviews should be conducted either in-person or via online exit interview survey for more honest and candid feedback.

5 Exit Interview Questions for the Most Insightful Answers

What questions should you ask in an exit interview?

Questions in exit interviews provide opportunities to ask employees about their reasons for leaving and gain feedback about their experience working with the organization. Some questions for exit interview questions are broad, but others narrow down to gain insight into specific topics. These include: Why are exit interviews important?

How to conduct an exit interview?

When conducting an exit interview, it’s important to listen carefully to what the employee has to say. This makes them feel like their feedback is important to the organization. You should also try to ask them further questions based on the feedback they provide to avoid making any direct assumptions.

Why are exit interviews important?

Exit interviews can help HR identify trends of why employees leave. That enables you to create targeted strategies to prevent unwanted turnover. Leaving employees are more likely to be candid about their feelings and experiences than while working for the company.

What should you do after an exit interview?

Once you’ve done an exit interview, you should do the following: To learn from your exit interview questions, you need to analyze the feedback you’re getting. Take the time to carefully go through the answers you receive. After enough exit interviews, you should be able to spot specific areas that need to be improved.