my employee announced she’s leaving but doesn’t know when

by Alison Green on November 7, 2019

A reader writes:

My part-time employee called me to notify me that she has decided that she is going to be leaving because she has decided that she needs a full-time job with benefits. This is not an option in my small business, so I can understand her position. However, she also said that she is not giving her “official resignation” but that she wanted to let me know ASAP so that I would have a heads-up. She is searching for full-time employment, but when she will leave is unpredictable.

My question is how to best handle the situation for my business moving forward. I am currently training her on several aspects of her job, which feels somewhat pointless now that I know she is leaving. Should I post the position and start recruiting candidates to replace her? If I find someone, what if I want them to start before she gives her “official resignation”? Would that be considering firing her? I don’t want to put her out of a job prematurely, but I also risk having a gap in her position if I don’t start looking.

I answer this question over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here.

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  1. cmcinnyc*

    Is this at all a good idea for an employee to do though? Alison says this is good and the employee did the manager a favor, but is it any good at all for the employee? I don’t think I’d choose to give my job extra notice when I don’t have another job lined up unless I was angling for severance or some kind of non-standard parting. I can think of a couple examples from my workplace–the woman who transitioned out to consulting (and this biz is now a client); the guy who would be leaving a multi-million dollar portfolio to go work for his brother, but was able to set up a transition with training (because he had a lot of room to negotiate with his brother on start date!). The guy who wanted to mostly retire and work part time. But this? This doesn’t seem like a good idea at all.

    1. Close Bracket*

      “the employee did the manager a favor, but is it any good at all for the employee?”

      That depends entirely on the manager. I would not give notice without a new job lined up (except in extreme circumstances), but I would be willing to give several weeks notice to maintain good will. It can take months to find a job, though.

    2. Ask a Manager* Post author

      She did the manager a favor so from the manager’s perspective it’s helpful, but no, it’s not something I’d recommend to the employee, unless she has very specific circumstances. Specifically, you should only do it if you’ve seen prior evidence that your company will handle it well. If they have a track record of accommodating long notice periods and have shown that employees can feel safe being candid in this way, then sure. Otherwise, it’s a risk I wouldn’t recommend.

      More here:
      https://www.askamanager.org/2013/04/how-much-notice-should-you-give-when-you-resign.html

    3. Mirve*

      Perhaps they were hoping the business owner could offer a full-time position if they said they were planning to leave. The LW says they cannot, but the employee might have hoped differently.

      1. The Man, Becky Lynch*

        This is part of it sometimes.

        The person before me was thinking that they’d be given some kind of counter offer/plea to stay. It wasn’t really about money or hours though, it was about wanting to be more important than they were.

        1. CupcakeCounter*

          This happened to my husband. He hired someone and after a little more than a year they put in their notice. The guy was OK, not great by any means, so Hubs wished him well and started talking about transition plans.
          Apparently in his exit interview he made several comments about how Hubs didn’t even try for a counter offer and since guy didn’t have a firm job in hand might have accepted a counter that was offered if it included several concessions. Granted those concessions were deal breakers for this position so it wouldn’t have worked out. Hubs was incredulous that this guy thought they would chase him and meet his demands when there had been several meetings recently about performance issues.

          1. hbc*

            I basically had that happen to me, except the guy claimed to have a firm offer on hand. He was just so full of himself that he thought I’d throw money at him to get him to stay. It didn’t occur to him that I was serious about our (just implemented) pay ranges and what I would need to see from him to give a raise, nevermind that I was thrilled he was leaving voluntarily.

      2. Hey Karma, Over here.*

        I agree. I think this is definitely a possibility. Although there’s no hard and fast rule, I think part time positions are different from full time positions in terms of longevity. Yes, some people want part time forever, but more people do not. I think for an employer of part time staff to be surprised that an employee leaves is naive or ingenuous. I think the odd part of this situation is the time frame.
        I think instead of:
        “I’m leaving because I need a full time job with benefits.”
        “I understand. I wish we could help you, but we can’t offer that. When are you leaving?”
        “Well, I don’t know.”
        If employee had said,
        “Is there a way to turn this into a full time job with benefits?”
        “No, I’m sorry. We can’t do that.”
        “Ok, then I think I have to start looking.”
        “I understand. Please feel like you can come to me in time to start a transition plan.”

        1. Cg1254*

          I got the understanding both parties knew it couldn’t turn full-time w/ benefits from the beginning and that the employee in question was getting experience

        2. Amy Sly*

          At my last job where basically everyone but the managers were temps with indefinite contracts (no, I don’t know how they could do that legally), I enormously appreciated the manager who, when someone went on an interview, said, “Oh, I want you to stay working with me, but I really do want all of you to get real jobs.”

          1. shep*

            My first manager was like this. She wasn’t always great as a manager, but she was an overall decent person, and she actively offered to be a reference for me while was still working for her. I was really grateful.

    4. Sparrow*

      I gave advance warning to a boss I had – and wanted to maintain – a particularly strong relationship with. It was a bit more reasonable because we work in an industry that tends to have a fairly standard hiring season, so we could anticipate a rough timeline. The other advantage for me was that she allowed me a lot of flexibility while interviewing so I could just block time off my calendar and do a phone or skype interview in my office without sneaking around.

      That said, I wouldn’t generally recommend giving advance warning, and I almost certainly won’t do it again. There were negative outcomes, despite her best intentions and her desire to keep me around as long as possible, and they were all related to higher ups effectively punishing me for being open about my plans to move on – basically the exact outcome OP’s contemplating. Honestly, it soured the way I remember what was, on the whole, a very good job.

      1. Pommette!*

        Similar story for me. I started job searching while we were in the middle of strategic planning for the year to come. I was working in what was basically a three-person team.

        Saying nothing felt wrong, because I knew that many of our plans were contingent on having me around, while others involved investing in job-specific training for me. (Not saying that I was irreplaceable, just that this was one of those roles where it can take a long time to get up to speed, and where changing staff partway through a project is really difficult). I wanted to maintain a good relationship with my employer, and didn’t want to leave them in the lurch. I figured: I’d rather lose this job now than lose the sleep I would lose feeling guilty about this, or risk losing the good reference.

        Things worked out OK for me in the end, but it was a big risk. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it, and I wouldn’t judge anyone else for not taking it.

      2. Bee*

        Yeah, I had a really good relationship with my boss of 7+ years that I wanted to maintain, I knew she’d feel blindsided and betrayed if I DIDN’T tell her, and I’d also set up an ultimatum: “I want these improvements in my terms, I know I can get them elsewhere, I think they are extremely reasonable after the amount of time I’ve worked here and the success I’ve had, and if you can’t meet them I will not be able to remain happy here.” So she knew I was looking, and we had conversations about it, and I thought it was going well.

        BUT those months while I was looking wound up really fraying our relationship in ways I didn’t anticipate. She stopped trusting me, and it led to a really horrible misunderstanding where she basically accused me of stealing information. It had a really simple explanation that she completely understood once we actually talked about it, but a year before she would’ve just asked me what the deal was, not suspected me of being both dishonest AND so obviously bad at it. So yeah, not something I can unequivocally recommend either.

      3. The Blue Marble*

        This happened to me but differently. Once my boss found out my husband had accepted a job out of state (rumor mill due to industry he was in – did not come from me), she called me into her office to start succession planning. She even posted my job without my knowledge. When I went to her to ask what would happen if I was not ready to give notice (I still had to sell our house) she blew me off. Sure enough. When the new person she hired started, I was given a letter of termination. Only takes one time to get burned like that…

      4. AuroraLight37*

        I did this with one manager and it did turn out well. I needed to move to Home State, and he was very understanding. But I’d also seen other staff leave on excellent terms with him, so I wasn’t worried about his reaction since I knew he wouldn’t come unglued. I would be very hesitant to do this with another manager I wasn’t totally sure of, though.

    5. The Man, Becky Lynch*

      It certainly depends on your position and how the company/boss handles departing or possibly-departing employees.

      Everywhere I’ve been, nobody chased me out the door by any means. I was once cut loose a couple days before the end of my notice period but they paid me for it but that was just because they thought I was wasting my time by being there [and I’m pretty sure the actual boss was tired of my face, which is fine, I was tired of his way before I left. But even a bad boss who knew what they were losing handled it well!]

      Again, it really depends on your position and relationship with your boss. My boss now gave notice and it’s open ended because finding a replacement is a tedious adventure to say the least, lots of very specific requirements for the job itself.

      But if you’re in a company who views you all as numbers and replaceable or is prone to perp-walks, then yeah, never show your hand before you know it’s a winner.

    6. another situation*

      It’s sometimes inevitable for people going back to school. I worked four years before I went to grad school and I absolutely thought I was going to get a better letter from my boss than any of my stale undergrad references, but of course asking for that letter let them know almost a year before my actual end date that I was leaving. It wasn’t great, I was in a billable position where using overhead time was essentially verboten but where work was scarce enough that it would often take 50+ hours a week to bill 40 to clients, and reticence to put me on new multi-year contracts made that significantly worse. But it was still the right thing to do, it was a really good letter and my department head basically told me it helped my candidacy a lot when I later asked her for advice about letters for a grant.

    7. SarahKay*

      I did it in a previous role at my current company, and in fact it worked out incredibly well for me.
      I was working in a general admin / invoicing role, and also putting myself through evening classes for my accounting qualification. I’d been here three years, and my manager was looking at the future for our department, potentially with me in a pivotal role. I trusted him to do the right thing so I actually said to him “Look, I need to give you the heads-up that I’m nearly done with my qualification and when that happens I’m going to be looking for a relevant role, presumably elsewhere. I don’t want to let you build plans around me, not knowing this”.
      Now, this is in UK so there are better employee protections, plus our notice period will be specified in our contracts and is usually at least a month for professional roles.
      That said, I was justified in the trust I placed in him – at the time he said he appreciated the warning, and would keep it in mind. He also, it later turned out, went to and spoke to both the site leader and finance leader, and basically asked them how the company could keep me.
      About four months later I started a new role in the finance department here – and now, ten years on, I’m actually the finance leader.
      Some of that was absolutely luck. Firstly, I was lucky enough to have an excellent manager. Secondly, the timing was good as the finance leader had been thinking for a while that they needed an extra head, so this prompted them to put together a proposal to create the position. Had there not been a need in finance, I imagine I’d be elsewhere now. But the other side of it is that if I’d not told my manager my plans, none of that would have happened.

    8. alligator aviator autopilot antimatter*

      I just did this, as the employee… it may not have been the greatest idea but I’ll explain why.

      1. My manager likes me just fine personally, but has made it clear that there’s no future for me in this organization, long term. She’s actively trying to streamline and/or eliminate my job functions from the organization altogether and already knew about my job search (and in fact even has assisted with it.)
      2. My spouse and I are tired of our current city. It’s expensive, the weather stinks, the commutes are getting worse.
      3. I’m currently in the interview process for a new job in New City A. In my field, this process takes forever so it may be another month or two before I know for sure whether I’ve got the gig or not. But in the meantime, my spouse and I have decided that if this job doesn’t work out, we’re going to move to New City B instead, near his family. We’re on a month-to-month lease, have no kids, and he works remotely, so all we have to do is sign a new lease in whichever new city, pack our stuff and go.

      I gave her a heads-up on all this recently (after stewing on it for a good while) so that we can work on documenting the things I do, start transitioning it a little at a time, and so that I can start talking about this with the colleagues I’m close to without worrying that it will get back to her before I can tell her. I’ve seen a history of long notice periods being accepted with grace here – so far it’s worked out that way in my case too. My manager was very happy that I gave her a heads-up, and at this point I don’t see any indication that I’ll be pushed out before I’m ready. I feel better having told her for now, but it may prove down the line to have not been ideal… we’ll see!

  2. Limbo*

    Removed since off-topic. (If I’m wrong and it’s linked to this letter, please feel free to repost with a clarification!) – Alison

  3. JAR*

    You could use this time to draft a job description, particularly if the job has evolved in the time she’s had it or if you see it changing in the future, and prepare interview questions. If you make it clear you’re not going to push her out early, your employee might even be willing to help you nail down what the most important skills and qualities are for the role.

    If being down a person would be a major problem, it could be valuable to speak to a local recruitment agency about potentially hiring a temp while you recruit someone permanent, or tapping into their network of candidates (especially if you need hard-to-find skills).

    1. NotSettledOnANameHere*

      This! I’ve been able to do this with employees a few times and it’s been very valuable.

    2. TootsNYC*

      as far as practical steps for the manager–this is a great one.

      Also, consider whether it might actually be sensible to start training her, and in the process of that, create training documentation.
      Creating training documentation is often something that we don’t do when we don’t need to. But you could train her (because who knows how long it’ll take her), and that will give you a reason to start.
      Plus, during the course of training her, maybe you and she will learn ways to make that training (or the materials you create) better.

  4. Hobbit*

    I’ve had several employees tell me they are job hunting etc… I always respond thanked them for letting me know and asked them to keep me updated. Then I continued on as normal. One of my employees has been telling me “I’m leaving” for about two years. She finally found a second part-time job and still works here. I have another employee who told me over the summer that he would be moving on, but he’s still here. Job hunting is a lot of work and takes time. This is something I file in the “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it” category.

    1. The New Wanderer*

      I’m guessing “Then I continued on as normal,” which is awesome, is a big reason why you have employees who feel safe in telling you about their plans. If no one plays a game with it (employee looking for a counteroffer, manager driving someone out early), then it seems like it works out okay for everyone.

      1. Hobbit*

        Both of the employees are very polite and considerate. The second employee is new to the workforce, which is why I let him know what general standard for giving his resignation. (I don’t want him to go, but he is a part-time employee who just graduated from college.) I also let him know that while I appreciated the heads up, some bosses would just terminate an employee.

  5. That Girl from Quinn's House*

    I worked somewhere where we managed a lot of people who were in transition (ex: students who’d graduate, or get a full-time internship for a semester, or people who took the job while looking for a full/time job) so I have experience with this.

    What you do, is you thank them for letting you know, and then tell them they are always welcome to pick up weekend/evening shifts or sub once they leave. Because eventually your whole staff will get the flu over Black Friday weekend or something, and you’ll need that person to come in and save the day.

    1. TootsNYC*

      that’s a good point!

      If you push her out early, you’ll create ill will.
      And if she’s generally a decent employee, there’s a huge advantage to having someone like that floating out there in the world who already knows how things work.

  6. The Man, Becky Lynch*

    This has happened with a few of my employers over the years, more specifically it happened with my current position, the person before me gave a “I’m gonna leave! Not sure when but I’m looking!” heads up. No, don’t push her out by any means. What my boss did was get a timeline in place and start collecting resumes somewhat quickly to get an idea of who’s out there, shocker, it took them a couple months to even get resumes that they were interested in [thankfully that worked for me since it was open for awhile when I decided to apply, since it was when I was then looking].

    What you should do is create a bit of an action plan, this is a perfect time to make sure you have all your procedure documents in one place for a new person’s training. Including new procedures you may want to teach her while she’s looking for a full time job, her search can take a long time.

    In our case, even with a couple of months notice in the end, the person before me was employed by the time I came on. We originally thought “okay there’s a lot of training time left, at least 2-3 weeks of training!” and it was all working great. Until she got a “you can start on Monday.” call the Friday before I was supposed to start that following week. So be aware that there will indeed be that transition period that you’ll have to deal with.

    Other places have set it up so that the exiting person was there for a month to six weeks to help me train and completely onboard. This costs you money in the end but you shouldn’t have such precarious finances that you cannot afford the extra wages otherwise there’s another issue that you need to be thinking about.

    1. AllTheNope*

      One place I left to do some personal things paid me very well to write a procedures manual for my department, then paid me very well to come in for a couple of hours a day to help my replacement get up to speed. It was a nice way to leave.

  7. Asenath*

    I gave a lot of notice for my upcoming retirement – months instead of the contract requirement of 2 weeks – but I have a good relationship with my employers, and I’ve known other people to do the same. For reasons rather further up in the food chain, they aren’t benefiting as much as they could have from my actions since hiring is a painfully prolonged process, but that’s not my problem. I’m glad I did it – it allowed me to make my decision firm and plan out all my work with a view to leaving it in as good a state as possible while putting off tasks I know I won’t get to (and communicating my plans about what was going in the “to do” and the “for my replacement” categories to my immediate managers). But I stated a firm end date, an openness to negotiating about my leave, and finally, a firm decision on when I was using my leave. I don’t see “I’m looking, but I don’t know when I’m going” helps either the employee or the employer.

    1. Pilcrow*

      I think big life events are an exception to the rule. They tend have fairly definitive end dates – retiring at the end of the year, starting grad school next semester, and such like.

      The nebulousness of a job search timeline is what’s difficult to work around. The employee could get an offer next week or still be looking a year later.

  8. Bend & Snap*

    OP should also take note of this very specific reason for leaving and be grateful for the notice. No benefits is a tough sell.

    1. The Man, Becky Lynch*

      Not just no benefits but part time! Part-time slots are the worst to fill, only very specific people [students and partial retirees come to mind usually when thinking about these] really actively look for part time work and plan to stay for awhile because it fits their needs and desires. Otherwise people are taking the job to get by while they are searching for full time work, so you should always assume people in a PT position are looking elsewhere and take good care of them to keep them happy for as long as possible.

      1. Elizabeth Proctor*

        The best way to get a PT employee who wants to stay, I’d guess, is if the schedule allows all their work to happen during a typical school day. I can see that being of interest to stay-at-home-parents whose kids are all in school. “Mother’s hours,” they used to call them…

        1. The Man, Becky Lynch*

          Yes, you have to give them as much freedom as possible.

          I did part time work as secondary work because my job was lacking in mental stimulation. The only way I worked at those places was having the ability to come and go within a very broad set of hours, since everything else came before the place that only needed 10hrs of work done a week!

        2. TootsNYC*

          I once hired an at-home mom for evening-shift work, so she could hand the kids off to dad and they didn’t have to pay for child care.

      2. Helena*

        Parents? I work three days a week to spend more time with my preschooler. Given the cost of childcare round here, most people on average earnings won’t actually be any worse off (you have to earn more than the median national income here for your net earnings to be higher than the cost of full-time daycare).

        1. The Man, Becky Lynch*

          Yes, some parents as well.

          My mom worked while we were in school but did contract work cleaning houses so it was even easier than a standard job place. My grandmother got her into it.

  9. squeakalicious*

    Never, never, never, never do what this employee did. Two weeks’ notice is more than enough. Things might work out in this case, but they can go horribly awry in most others. I don’t understand why someone would give an open-ended quit date, because hey, we’re all leaving our jobs eventually (either for another one or for a pine box); we ALL have open-ended quit dates. It sounds to me like the employee had hoped to force her manager to realize her value and offer her a full-time job. Way stupid. Do this at most companies and they’ll say “Why don’t you just go now” and perp-walk you to the exit.

    1. annony*

      Sometimes it can be nice to give more than two weeks notice. But open-ended notice is always a bad idea. It doesn’t actually help that much because you can’t really plan around someone leaving eventually.

    2. The Man, Becky Lynch*

      Stop making such wide spreading generalizations.

      Most companies do not ask you to leave immediately nor do they perp-walk you out.

      Unless you’re speaking of a very specific industry, then name it instead of painting them in one brush.

      Two weeks is NOT enough in a lot of positions. If you’re that easily replaceable though, maybe think about your career choices and employment choices.

      1. 1234*

        I feel like two weeks is enough in a junior role. I can’t imagine an SVP or CEO only giving two weeks’ notice.

        1. cmcinnyc*

          Where I work senior staff used to give longer notices, and occasionally still do, but there has been a sharp uptick in 2-week notices for very senior staff. Something is definitely up around here…

      2. Another HR manager*

        Agree! We greatly appreciate longer notices and get them. No one is perp-walked out. Also, we will work with an employee on an exit plan where we talk through possible timing for them and us — and what severance would be in place if our timing comes through before theirs. And if someone said, “I am going to start looking next June”. I will check in periodically but I am going to take them at the word and not worry about it until then – except for asking them to give extra attention to updating SOPs. If I get burned — well, staff will see that we gave the benefit of the doubt — and that is always worthwhile.

      3. BasicWitch*

        I do think it was too broad a generalization, but still… default position for employees should nearly always be to give 2 week and not a minute more. At my job (which I’m leaving, woot!) we had an employee give a month’s notice and indeed, she did get perp-walked out that very afternoon. Obviously, management is pretty bad here… but good management is sadly a rare thing. Only give the amount of notice you can afford to survive being effectively jobless.

        I gave more than slightly more notice, but I made sure I had enough in savings to support myself in case they were jerks about it, or even if they held up my final check (illegal, I know, but not unheard of). I also had everything in my desk already packed, and all my files in order so my nice coworkers would have them, before I knocked on my manager’s door to tell her. It was fine, but I was prepared and didn’t kid myself on how it could’ve gone.

        Put your own mask on first, as they say.

    3. ErinFromAccounting*

      I wouldn’t say ‘never’. I knew I had my current job nearly half a year ahead of time (a university recruitment situation), so I gave my previous job over a month’s notice and was able to help interview and train my replacement. It made the process way better for everyone involved.

    4. hbc*

      Ha, I did this at both of my previous places of employment, though neither were for a job search. (One was a move and the other was me quitting after being done with the toxicity.) I knew that they would want me to work for as long as they could use me, and in the off chance I was wrong, I would have been okay with the firing and subsequent unemployment checks.

    5. MissDisplaced*

      Eh! I think it depends on the relationship with the employer. Not everything has to end acrimoniously. Also, as this job is only part time, the stakes are a bit lower. If the OP did push the employee out sooner, likely the employee wouldn’t care too much, but would be prefer to stay on until they find another position.

  10. Pommette!*

    It may or may not make sense to train the employee on doing new tasks. (Training can take time, but then again, so can job searches!)
    If you do decide to continue training her, though, you can treat the situation as an opportunity to create documentation that you can reuse with future employees.

  11. RC Rascal*

    The best approach for an employee who knows they are planning to leave and is tempted to tell the employer their plans is to put the energy into preparing documentation, as opposed to communicating verbal intent. Really, what is the outcome of communicating verbal intent to leave? The employee makes themselves vulnerable and the employer spends their time preparing for a replacement.

    Instead, spend the energy preparing documentation to hand over and quietly training backups on specific roles. That way when the time comes for you to go, everything is in hand and you are leaving things in good shape and on good terms. This gives the most optionality to the employee while still leaving the employer in good condition.

    1. DJ*

      And you never know when something weird will happen. I had planned to start job searching earlier in the year and then I had a random medical thing come up. Nothing serious, but I didn’t want to deal with the headache of trying to switch insurance until after I had everything taken care of, so I decided to hold off. Had I announced I was planning to leave, I would have had a harder time being able to change my plans at the last minute (if I could change my plans at all).

      I just don’t think it’s ever worth the risk (with a few industry/job specific exceptions) because there’s pretty much no payoff for you as the employee. And if your boss is petty enough to decide they won’t be a positive reference for you when you only give them two weeks’ notice, then it’s unlikely they were going to treat you better had you given more notice.

  12. Elizabeth*

    I’m actually kind of this employee at the moment. My husband accepted a position that is 80 miles away. He can’t commute forever. We’re going to move once I have a job there. Because I have an incredibly solid relationship with my manager, and because I have a skillset that is difficult to find, I told her that I’m looking in the new city and that I didn’t know what the timeline looked like.

    I now have an office mate and a young colleague that I’m mentoring. For however long I’m here, be it 4 weeks or 2 years, I’m giving him the benefit of having an experienced individual who has done the job for 25 years to ask questions of and pick my brain. I can’t hook a cable up to download information between our brains, but I can make sure that I give him as much knowledge and experience as possible while I’m still here.

    My husband asked me why I told my manager. First, this is a major change in my personal life, and there wasn’t much way to hide that. Second, because I have the tenure I do, leaving is going to put them in a serious bind if there isn’t a plan for how to fill the holes. Now, we have a plan and a way to make the holes a lot smaller.

    1. Another HR manager*

      Did your company hire the person you are mentoring as your replacement? If so, they are paying 2 salaries for one job — not sure how that can work for any length of time at most companies.

  13. Ex-Teacher's Wife*

    I just had an employee leave for a better job. She was way over-qualified for the staff position (she had the degree for a professional position, but it wasn’t available) and the new job was a professional position closer to her family. I knew about it months in advance because the new employer asked me to give a reference for her. It was nice to know that there was a chance she’d be leaving so we had plenty of time to wrap up projects, shift duties/retrain people, and documentation. The position is in academia, so I knew it would be a long hiring process for her, so I spent the time preparing to go as soon as she gave official notice and I could repost. We were sad to see her go because she was so great, but it was such a great opportunity for her.

  14. Audiophile*

    I think I’ve shared this here before, but a few jobs back I gave told the new boss that I was interviewing. It had been a rough 2 1/2 -3 months in this role (original boss had been fired but it wasn’t really announced and various other issues) and I felt that I should be candid since she was new and we were in the trenches together. She initially took the news well, but then wanted me to give her permission to share it with the ED because she was nervous about when I might end up leaving. Since I didn’t have a job lined up and was interviewing for several positions, I was not keen to publicize that I was interviewing. Lesson learned.

    In my last role, I waited for my boss to announce he was leaving before I announced that I was also interviewing.

  15. chatterbox*

    I took a part-time admin job in another department of a college where I also am part-time faculty. Looks like maybe a full-time faculty job is opening in a year, and there’s been enough conversations with key people about me going for it, that I figured I’d better tell my admin job boss. So far so good, with boss acknowledging that the part-time job is a transitional one for most people.

  16. If I only had a penguin...*

    Sounds a little like a ploy to force you to figure out how to offer her a full time job with benefits to me. Not a really a threat, but kind of an attempt at manipulation.

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