How to Run an Exit Interview: A Practical Guide
Someone is leaving. Whether they’re resigning, retiring, or being made redundant, they know things about your company right now that nobody else will tell you, what’s broken, who’s difficult, why good people actually quit. An exit interview is your last chance to hear it. Most companies waste it with a tick-box form and a bored HR rep.
This guide covers how to use the Exit Interview Form to get honest, useful information, when to run the interview, how to handle each section, and the mistakes that guarantee you’ll hear nothing real.
When to Use This
Offer an exit interview to every departing employee, regardless of how they’re leaving. Resignations get the most attention, but redundancies and even dismissals can surface valuable insights, someone being let go for performance reasons may still have sharp observations about broken processes.
Schedule it in the final week, but not on the last day. The last day is emotional and rushed. Two or three days before departure is the sweet spot: close enough that they’ve mentally checked out of politics, far enough that they’re still engaged.
Make it voluntary and say so explicitly. A forced exit interview produces guarded answers. An invited one, “we’d value your honest perspective”, gets further, especially if you explain how the feedback is used.
How to Fill It Out
Section 1: Departure basics. Employee name, role, department, length of service, last day, and reason for leaving (as stated by the employee). Keep the reason field as free text, not a dropdown, “better opportunity” in a dropdown hides whether they’re leaving for pay, a better manager, or because they’re burned out. Let them say it in their own words.
Section 2: Role and responsibilities. Ask what they actually spent their time on versus what the job description said. This is diagnostic gold: if every leaver says “60% of my time was admin the role description never mentioned,” your job design is wrong, not your hiring.
Section 3: Management and culture. How was their relationship with their direct manager? Did they feel supported? Would they recommend the company to a friend? These questions need careful handling, the interviewer must create genuine safety. If the departing employee’s manager is in the next room, you’ll get polite fiction. The interviewer should be HR or a neutral party, never the direct manager.
Section 4: Reasons for leaving (detailed). Go deeper than the headline reason. Someone leaving “for more money” might actually be leaving because they asked for a raise twice and were ignored, the money is the trigger, the neglect is the cause. Ask what would have made them stay. The answer to that question is often cheaper than the cost of replacing them.
Section 5: Suggestions for improvement. What would they change about the role, the team, or the company? Frame it constructively: “If you were advising your replacement, what would you tell them?” gets more honest answers than “What did we do wrong?”
Section 6: Practical handover notes. Any loose ends, undocumented knowledge, or introductions the successor needs. This overlaps with the role handover form, cross-reference rather than duplicate.
Common Mistakes
1. The wrong interviewer. Having the direct manager conduct the exit interview guarantees sanitised answers. Nobody tells their boss’s peer that their boss is the reason they’re quitting. Use HR or someone genuinely neutral.
2. Defensive reactions. If the interviewer argues with feedback (“that’s not fair, we did offer training”), the employee shuts down and the rest of the interview is wasted. The interviewer’s job is to listen and record, not to defend. Thank them for honesty, even when it stings.
3. Collecting feedback nobody reads. The most common exit interview failure: forms filed and never analysed. Aggregate the data quarterly. Three leavers citing the same manager, the same broken process, or the same pay grievance is a pattern demanding action. One-off comments are anecdotes; patterns are intelligence.
4. Ignoring the “would you return?” question. Always ask whether they’d consider coming back. A “yes” means the departure is circumstantial and the door should stay open, boomerang employees are among the best hires you can make. A “no” with reasons tells you what would need to change.
Who Needs to Sign Off
HR typically owns the exit interview process. The interviewer completes the form, shares a summary (not necessarily the raw notes, departing employees speak more freely when they know their exact words won’t be forwarded to their manager) with relevant managers, and files the original confidentially. Senior leadership should see quarterly trend summaries.
How Often to Review and Update
Review the aggregate data quarterly, that’s where the value is. Review the form itself annually: are the questions still surfacing useful information, or are people giving rote answers? If completion rates drop, the process has become performative and needs redesigning.
Download the free Exit Interview Form template.