The resignations are still flowing in for the employers, and they are facing a peculiar situation. No matter what perks they offer, raise the pay packages, offer a hybrid work environment (combination of remote and in-office work) and motivate them through conference calls or training classes, the resignations from employees just won’t stop.
Probably you are also the one who joined the quit-the-job trend last year and sent a resignation email without offering any concrete explanation to your boss. On the fun side, the resignation letter email is probably the only email from the employee side that every boss reads twice.
Preparing the resignation letter – but why, really?
Although it’s the best policy to resign politely, during these times, employees are not looking for resignation letter examples or resignation letter templates online because that’s the last thing on their minds. That is because the ‘Big Quits’ is actually about resignation without the usual reasons that one would expect.
Here, the workers are simply quitting their job to sit at home and ponder over some of life’s basic questions. Call it some spirituality sneaking in or some realization set in, but the bottom line is that people are writing resignation emails and just moving on.
You have been trying to think over the purposes that drive your life, or maybe you are tired of the rat race and always wanted to get out of it but were never able to. None of these reasons qualify to be the reason enough in what you call a normal reason for which you write a resignation letter and simply quit the job that provided you the financial security you always wanted.
The corporate sector is under pressure
There has already been immense pressure due to the supply chain disruptions, and then worker shortage made matters worse for the companies, not just in the US but also in the UK. Whenever you resign for a reason that’s considered too odd, a reason to tender the resignation letter to your boss, things get difficult for you to get back to a job once the Big Quit phase is over and you start building a job profile or writing a new resume.
But that is not the case here. The resignations are in millions and across all levels and in every industry. It is basically the employers on the backfoot after seeing employees quit in big numbers. They are doing everything to get people back to work, and the ‘odd reasons’ are being taken as something normal that happened due to a phenomenon that took over the corporate sector for some time.
HR still needs an explanation of why you resigned
It is still very routine, though, that the recruiter will ask you for a reason for resignation, and they might get to hear an answer similar to what many have already answered. But it is HR, and it’s the recruiter – they are made to question the job candidates and introspect them a little on the personal front even though they are pretty sure that they’ll get a standard answer – a pretty lame thing in times of AI and ML-based job interview software where candidates get questions from machines based on a very flexible pattern.
Handling the recruiter's question on why you had resigned
So how do you handle such a situation? It’s obvious that you cannot simply say ‘because of great resignation’ or ‘big quit’ and just let the recruiter ask you the next question. If you looked for a nice resignation letter example, wrote one based on some resume template, deliberated for some time, discussed it with your family and then resigned, it clearly means it was a well-thought-of decision to join the Great Resignation phenomenon.
The answer when a recruiter asks why you resigned from your previous job is simple – be honest in saying that you were just a part of the crowd that was going through a phase where they were overwhelmed by things happening around them. Resignations were happening all around – colleagues, family members, friends and the news were all over the tv and on every social media platform.
Say that you were composed and did not think of quitting instinctively or just because a trend had set in. Instead, say that you gave it a lot of thought and wanted to do the best for the company, but soon you realized that you were overloaded with work due to the company being short-staffed and had no choice but to take a break.
Resignation letters keep flowing – and HR knows why
All of this might sound diplomatic, but that’s how it is. The recruiter knows the real reason. There is no point in making up things when you can simply be honest about why you resigned from your previous job, even when things were going well. You are not the only person, though, to put in the resignation letter.
You are one out of around 4.4 million resignations a month since the last year or so. That’s huge, and you can be sure that recruiters have also gone through the great resignation period, and many have also returned to work after quitting during 2020 or 2021.
There are reasons employees are writing resignation letters
The pandemic-related stress and exhaustion, an overdose of toxic news and posts on the internet that was related to the resignations, supply chain disruptions and the pandemic, seeing everyone around you opting to quit and join the ‘great resignation’ phenomenon, being overworked due to company being short-staffed, frequent calls from the employers to switch back from remote work to the office mode while the pandemic was raging on – the reasons are really endless why Great Resignations set in.
An employer and the recruitment team cannot simply ignore or see them as normal reasons where there was no reason to resign sounds like the team is quite uncaring or does not have an empathetic approach towards the employees. If that’s the case, you probably should wait a little longer to join back or try and find a better employer.
Life after your resignation email is okayed by the boss
As mentioned earlier, the resignation letter template you looked for, which finally became your resignation email, was for a reason. If you still think you are not ready to look for a new job, give yourself more time. Pushing yourself into it again means you will go to work half-heartedly and unprepared, and that will severely affect your productivity.
It’s better to sit back, spend quality time with your family, work on your physical and mental health, develop new hobbies, work on your professional social media profiles, write a resume, and develop skills specific to your job. Upload your resume to job sites or network professionally only when you are at your 100%. Till then, value the resignation letter you sent to your boss. Fulfil what you had thought of at that time.
