Should I Tell My Boss About My Job Search?
Episode 271 | Author: Emilie AriesToday’s blog about how you should communicate to your boss about your job search was inspired by an email I received from a friend of the show. I will call her S for the sake of today to keep her anonymous. And here's what she wrote:
“I hope that you are both well today. I am reaching out with the hope that you can help me or point me to already established resources.
I am in the process of interviewing for a few different jobs. Everything is moving quickly and I am thankful to have a finalist interview for one of the positions on Wednesday. I woke up this morning excited, but then stopped in my tracks because I have not yet shared this information with my current supervisor - and it made me a little bit anxious.
I have been told that is a best practice to let your supervisor know when you are in the final stages (or even before that depending on the relationship that you have with them). However, the small spout of anxiety stems from a very toxic work culture and extreme lack of trust with my current employer/supervisor. I am not sure how they will respond, if they will be supportive, etc.
So with all of that, I candidly do not know what to do next. ANY and ALL help that you are able to provide (or resources that you can share) would be incredible.”
Keep your Job Search on the Down-Low
You have every right to keep your job search on the down-low. My gut instinct right off the top is to protect yourself especially in this wild economy that we find ourselves in. I know a lot of people are still getting hired, a lot of people are still making career transitions, but I would wait.
What's the big difference between letting your boss know when you're in a finalist interview versus letting them know when you have a job offer in hand. There's not a big difference from your employers perspective but there's an enormous difference from your perspective.
From your perspective, being a finalist in an interview doesn't mean much. Would you really be willing to tip your employer off to the fact that you’ve been job searching and you're in the final stages of an interview process for them to not come through with a job offer?
If you don’t get a written formal job offer out of this final interview, then you are in a terrible spot. You got no protection. You’ve got no offer.
I'm not usually this conservative when it comes to communication, but unless you're really ready for them to fully know that you're checked out with a possibility of not actually having that job offer just yet, I would not rush to judgment.
You can even get a job offer and not tell your boss, if you decide through negotiation that you're definitely going to take it. I feel like people overly prioritize their current boss’s feelings instead of their future boss’s feelings. At some point you gotta put your next employer first by disappointing your current employer and I know that's harsh.
Two Exceptions
First, do you work for a company where it's the cultural norm to relocate talent from within? If that's the kind of culture that your workplace is, where your employer really prides itself on being proactive about helping employees find their next step forward, then that would be one exception.
Start the conversation with your boss, manager, or HR about what your goals are in a job transition. Share that you’re searching for an opportunity to learn and be challenged in other ways. Get more concrete about what's the motivation behind the search, so they can help you and you can still help them by staying in the organization.
Now the other exception is if you have a deeply vulnerable relationship with your boss. One instrumental bosses in my past, Kate, was my boss at my lowest point in my life when I was a mess - just starting therapy, learning about addiction, and dealing with an alcoholic partner. She was collateral damage in the wake of that break up.
So was I just going to surprise her one day and be like, I got another job? No. She was fully aware of my job search. I owed that to her because she had really gone out on a limb for me to make sure that I was still getting paid for the lack of work I was doing during a really terrible time in my life.
There's two exceptions to the rule which is if you have a workplace culture that prides itself and normalizes reassigning folks from within and encouraging folks to continue or if you have a boss to whom you owe a debt of gratitude.
Get a Job Offer in Writing
In our free ultimate job search guide, which is a comprehensive 70+ page guide that has a step-by-step approach to the job search, I write that you are not lying by keeping your job search to yourself. An important thing to keep in mind is that you have to sometimes protect yourself, especially in a very tumultuous economy like the one we're in right now.
There's nothing wrong with putting yourself first for a few weeks just to get from interview stage to final offer because you have so much more security when you have a written job offer in hand. I podcasted about this before in episode 191, Why You Should Always Get a Job Offer in Writing. It is a lot harder to rescind a job offer once it’s been put in writing. So keep in mind, getting that initial job offer is just step one if you're going to negotiate, which I highly recommend you do. You can probably even negotiate a later start date with your next employer if you want to make sure you're not leaving your current employer on alert.
Take it on a case-by-case basis, treat your individual situation individually in which timing might matter more. Give yourself time. Bet on you, put yourself first and put your next employer above your current one if that's what it takes. But we got to advocate for ourselves. We got to watch our own backs, and it's not rude to keep information to yourself that you don't trust others with.
If y'all are looking for more job search related information, podcast episodes, and guides, head to bossedup.org/jobsearch to download our free job search guide.
If you’re ready to take your job search seriously and team up with a community of accountability who is going to be with you every step of the way to cheer you on, and help polish your entire targeted job search strategy, check out HIRED: our job search accelerator.
