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Ask Your Former Co-Workers for Feedback
Flip the exit interview on its head
Odds are, over the course of your professional life, you’re going to leave a lot of jobs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, most Americans hold more than a dozen during their career, moving on to a new position or company roughly every four years. For younger people, the wheel turns even faster; workers hold an average of five and a half jobs in the six years between ages 18 and 24.
All this job-hopping represents an opportunity: Some of the best — or at least the most honest — feedback on your performance can come when you’re on your way out, and asking for it is a smart way to ensure you’re performing even better in your next gig. But it’s not just your former boss you should be asking. “Some nasty bosses may be likely to withhold any positives and just focus on what they think you failed at,” says Aaron Halliday, PhD, an organizational psychologist based in Ontario. But ask your co-workers as well, and you may get a more complete picture. “Getting that 360-degree feedback is another way of making sure you’re getting more than one opinion, and it’s probably a more honest one,” Halliday adds.
Hearing their farewell feedback might help you perform better in your next position.
Essentially, this is the inverse of the classic exit interview, wherein a company — especially one “experiencing waves of turnover,” as Halliday writes in a recent LinkedIn article — tries to mine you for information before you go. By asking for feedback on your job performance, you can hold your own exit interview. Asking your co-workers (and your superiors, if you so choose) for their input can make you seem like a class act. Plus, hearing their farewell feedback might help you perform better in your next position. And yes, you can do this without making it super awkward. When you draft the standard farewell email to your colleagues (“I’ve worked with so many amazing people here; will continue to root for you from the sidelines; stay in touch!”), toss in a request for their evaluations of you.
A smart way to gather these evaluations is by using a tool like Google Forms, which allows you to ask specific questions and lets respondents remain anonymous. The best questions are open-ended, not leading, and encourage answers that will actually help you improve. Think, “What specific skills should I work on developing in my next position?” or, “How can I improve my relationships with members of future teams?”
“We live in an age where feedback is incredibly important,” Halliday says. “We’re even using wearables and constantly tracking our own data, both out of necessity and curiosity. You need a lot of feedback to develop as a person, and this is just one more way of noticing your blind spots as you go about bettering yourself.”
