What is Exit Interview?

An exit interview is a formal discussion conducted with an employee who has resigned or is otherwise leaving the organization. Its purpose is to understand the reasons behind the departure, collect feedback about the employee's experience, identify organizational or management issues that may be driving turnover, and gather suggestions for improvement. Exit interviews can be conducted by the direct manager, HR, or through anonymous digital surveys — each approach offering different trade-offs between depth and candor.

Common exit interview questions address the primary reason for leaving, satisfaction with management and culture, perceptions of career development opportunities, compensation competitiveness, work-life balance, and what the organization could do differently to retain similar employees in the future. The most valuable exit interviews go beyond surface-level answers to explore the underlying factors that accumulated over time to produce the departure decision.

The challenge with exit interviews is that departing employees may not be fully candid — either to avoid burning bridges or because the emotional dynamics of leaving make honest reflection difficult. Organizations mitigate this by conducting exit interviews with a neutral HR professional rather than the direct manager, offering an anonymous survey option, and following up 30-90 days post-departure when the former employee may feel freer to share honestly. The real value of exit interview data emerges through aggregation and trend analysis rather than individual responses — patterns across dozens of exits reveal systemic issues that individual conversations might not.

Exit interviews are one of the few opportunities to receive unfiltered feedback about organizational strengths and weaknesses. When analyzed in aggregate, exit data reveals the root causes of turnover and points directly to areas where investment in culture, management, compensation, or career development would have the greatest retention impact. For HR leaders, a systematic exit interview program — with consistent questions, reliable data capture, and regular trend analysis — is essential for understanding and reducing unwanted turnover.