Exit Interview Questions: 107 Questions and a Guide Builder

Exit Interview Questions: Build Your Interview Guide

This page lists 107 exit interview questions in 10 themes and builds them into a guide you can use today. Choose the themes, the length and the format. The builder puts the questions in a sensible order, adds an opening script and a closing script, and lets you reorder, copy and print the result. Every question is also listed further down, with 29 stay interview questions to ask before anyone resigns.

Nothing you choose here is stored or sent anywhere. The guide lasts until you close or reload the page.

How the exit interview template is put together

The builder works as an exit interview template that you fill by ticking boxes. It takes core questions first, one theme at a time, and only adds optional questions when there is room. The order of the finished guide follows the order a conversation naturally takes: the decision to leave, the job, the manager, the team, pay, workload, tools, what might have changed the outcome, the new job, and advice.

• Conversation: 5 questions in 15 minutes, 10 in 30 minutes and 15 in 45 minutes. That is two to three minutes per answer, with a few minutes kept for the opening and the close.
• Written survey: 8 questions for 15 minutes, 15 for 30 minutes and 22 for 45 minutes, at about two minutes per written answer. Shorter surveys are more likely to be finished.
• Core and optional: 25 questions are marked core. These are the best exit interview questions to keep the same for every leaver, so that answers can be compared. Optional questions go deeper on one theme.
• Interview, survey or both: 98 questions suit a conversation and 72 suit a written survey. Questions marked “Interview” depend on a follow-up, so they are left out of surveys. Questions marked “Survey” ask for a rating or a choice, so they are left out of conversations.

If you choose more themes than a short guide has room for, the builder covers the themes that matter most first: the reason for leaving, what would have changed the person’s mind, the manager, the role, and advice.

Worked example

Leave all 10 themes ticked, choose “30 minutes” and “Conversation”, and select “Build my guide”. The guide has 10 questions, one core question from each theme. It opens with “What is the main reason you decided to leave?” and ends with “What is one thing we should change to make this a better place to work?”. Change the length to 15 minutes and the guide drops to 5 questions, with a note that 5 of your themes are not covered.

Running an exit interview that tells you something

Who should run it

Someone outside the leaver’s reporting line: a member of the HR or people team, or a trained manager from another department. The line manager should not run it. The manager is often part of the reason, and may also write the reference, so the leaver will be careful about what they say. In a small organization with no HR team, ask a senior person from a different team or an outside adviser.

The line manager should still have their own goodbye conversation. That one is about handover and thanks, and it does not replace the exit interview.

Hold the interview in the last week or two of the notice period, and not on the final day. Offer the choice of a conversation, a written exit survey or both. Some people say more in writing, and some only say it out loud.

Confidentiality, and how far you can honestly promise it

Do not promise that the conversation is confidential or anonymous. In a team of four with one leaver this quarter, everyone will know who said what. Say what is true instead:

• who will see the notes, by role;
• that comments are combined with those of other leavers before managers see them, where there are enough leavers to do that;
• that you will ask before you quote anything that could identify the person;
• that there is a limit: a report of bullying, harassment, discrimination or something unsafe or unlawful may have to be passed on and acted on.

The opening script in the builder says all four. Write your notes as if the leaver may read them later, and keep them under your organization’s normal rules for employee records.

What to do with what you hear

Write up the notes on the same day. Record the main reason and up to two contributing reasons, using the same short list of reasons every time. The 10 themes on this page work as that list. Record separately whether the leaver thought the departure could have been prevented, and what would have prevented it.

Pass on anything that needs action now, such as a broken process or a handover gap, without waiting for a quarterly report. Tell the leaver’s manager the themes, and leave out the wording that would identify the source unless the leaver has agreed.

Spotting themes across leavers

One exit interview is one person’s account. The value comes from reading them together. Every quarter, count the main reasons and look at them by team, by length of service and by role, as long as each group is large enough that no one can be picked out. Look at people who leave in their first year separately, because those departures often say more about hiring and onboarding than about the job.

Compare what leavers say with what your engagement survey and stay interviews say. If leavers name workload and current employees do not, ask whether current employees feel able to say it. Report to leaders in two columns: what we heard, and what we are doing about it. People stop giving honest answers when nothing changes afterward.

If someone discloses bullying, harassment or discrimination

Stop working through the guide. Listen, and thank the person for telling you. Do not promise to keep it secret, and do not give a view on whether it happened. Write down what they say in their own words, ask what they would like to happen, and explain what you have to do next and who you will tell.

The person leaving does not end the matter. Other employees may still be affected, and your organization’s own policy and its legal duties apply. Follow your policy on complaints and tell the person named in it, usually the head of HR, on the same day.

• United States: the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission explains when harassment is unlawful under federal law and when an employer is liable. For harassment by coworkers or non-employees, an employer is liable if it knew, or should have known, about the harassment and failed to take prompt and appropriate corrective action. See EEOC: Harassment. State and local rules can differ.
• United Kingdom: Acas advises employers to take any bullying or discrimination complaint seriously and look into it as soon as possible, including a complaint made a long time after the incident. See Acas: handling a bullying, harassment or discrimination complaint and Acas: discrimination and the Equality Act 2010.

This section is general information and not legal advice. For a specific case, speak to your HR lead or an employment lawyer.

107 good exit interview questions, by theme

The full list of exit interview questions to ask, with exit survey questions marked. Each question is tagged as core or optional, and as suited to an interview, a survey or both. Great exit interview questions ask about something the organization can change and invite an example, so each one here is written to do that. The builder above draws from these same lists.

29 stay interview questions to ask before people resign

An exit interview tells you why one person left, after the point where you could do anything about it for them. A stay interview asks the same things of people who are still here. The answers are more useful for three reasons: you can act on them for the person who gave them, the person has less reason to be guarded than someone protecting a reference, and you hear from people who would never have reached an exit interview because they were going to leave quietly.

Unlike an exit interview, a stay interview is best run by the line manager, one to one, once or twice a year and apart from the performance review. Ask five or six of these, listen more than you talk, and come back within two weeks to say what you can and cannot change.

1. What part of your job would you miss most if it were taken away?
2. What are you learning at the moment, and what would you like to be learning?
3. Which of your skills are we not using?
4. What would you like to do more of in the next six months?
5. What would you like to do less of?
6. When did you last have a really good day at work, and what made it good?
7. When did you last think about leaving, and what prompted it?
8. If a recruiter called tomorrow, what would they need to offer for you to take the call seriously?
9. What keeps you here?
10. Do you feel your work is noticed? By whom?
11. How do you like to be recognized for good work?
12. What is one thing I could do differently as your manager that would make your job easier?
13. What am I doing that you would like me to keep doing?
14. Do you have the flexibility you need at the moment?
15. Is your workload sustainable for the next six months as things stand?
16. What gets in the way of doing your best work?
17. Which process or meeting would you drop if it were up to you?
18. Where would you like to be in two years, and can you see a route to that here?
19. Is there a role or project elsewhere in the organization that interests you?
20. Do you feel your pay is fair for what you do? What makes you say that?
21. Do you know what you would need to show to reach the next level?
22. Who on the team do you work best with, and what makes that work?
23. Is there anything about how the team works together that wears you down?
24. Have we made any promises to you that we have not kept?
25. What has changed here in the past year, for better or worse?
26. How confident are you in where the organization is heading?
27. Is there anything you are waiting for a decision on, from me or from the organization?
28. What would you tell a friend who asked what it is like to work here?
29. What should I have asked you that I did not?

Questions about exit interviews

What are good exit interview questions to ask?

Good exit interview questions are open, specific and about things the organization can change. Three from this page are "When did you first start thinking about leaving, and what was happening at the time?", "If you raised concerns before you resigned, what was done about them?" and "Was there anything we could have done that would have kept you here?". This page lists 107 questions in 10 themes, and 25 of them are marked as core.

How many questions should an exit interview have?

Fewer than most templates suggest. The builder on this page allows two to three minutes per answer in a conversation, which gives 5 questions for 15 minutes, 10 for 30 minutes and 15 for 45 minutes, with time kept for the opening and the close. A written exit survey can carry a few more: 8, 15 or 22 questions for the same three lengths.

Who should conduct an exit interview?

Someone outside the leaver’s reporting line, such as an HR or people team member, or a trained manager from another department. The line manager should not run it, because the manager is often part of the reason for leaving and may also be the person who writes the reference.

Are exit interviews confidential?

Only up to a point, and the interviewer should say so at the start. You can tell the leaver who will see the notes, and whether comments are combined with those of other leavers before managers see them. You cannot promise secrecy if the leaver reports bullying, harassment, discrimination or something unsafe or unlawful, because the organization may have to act on it.

Is an exit survey better than an exit interview?

They do different jobs. Exit survey questions give answers you can count and compare across leavers, and some people are more candid in writing. A conversation lets you ask a follow-up, which is where the real reason usually comes out. Many organizations send a short survey to every leaver and hold a conversation as well where they can.

What is the difference between an exit interview and a stay interview?

An exit interview asks someone who has already resigned why they are leaving. A stay interview asks a current employee what keeps them and what might make them leave, while there is still time to act on the answer. This page includes 29 stay interview questions.