Conan's Exit Interview: Grace Under Pressure
Did you catch Steve Carell’s hilarious exit interview of fellow (and now former) NBC employee Conan O’Brien on The Tonight Show? Carell’s deadpan mockery of the exit interview hardly exaggerates the reality. HR professionals are trained to ask personal questions to probe for morale problems or discrimination which may have motivated an employee’s resignation, often feigning sympathy before coldly asking for keys, badge and your copy card.
Hold your head high in an exit interview. Be forward and blunt, and be candid about discrimination, particularly sexual harassment. If you bring a lawsuit, your statements in your exit interview will be exhibit A. If you decide to play nice and fail to raise discrimination as a reason for leaving, you will lose a tremendous amount of credibility and face an uphill battle in court.
