So, you’ve decided that you are Quitting, and you’re heading towards your boss’s or employer’s office to let them know, and despite what others should be feeling now, you’re ecstatic instead, and all is good, but make sure you remember these next points.
Make it as friendly as possible
Yes, you hear me right. Ending your job at your current workplace doesn’t mean you need to unleash your battle cry, declare war, and revenge everyone whom you had issues with. No! It’s the contrary, it’s the realization of your growth, and the need to seek higher and better endeavors, and it starts by making peace with your own past, and embracing your coming future.
Being a Freelancer is highly dependent on your networking capabilities, and the way to start strengthening that part is staying in good terms with your ex-employer.
If you met any future clients, and they wanted to know about you from a super-visor perspective, it’s always helpful to reference your ex-employer to them, and provide them a way to reach him, and ask him about your quality of work, your punctuality, your performance with deadlines, your fields of expertise and so on, and you can only reference your ex-employer, if you departed them in good terms, so being there once upon a time in your career life will work in your advantage in that case.
Nevertheless, if you were truly competent in your ex-job, you must have contributed a lot to their eco-system’s success, and since we’re dealing, in this blog, with Information Technology related jobs, then you must have written a crucial piece of code, amended a big client’s platform, produced an in-house CMS, and so on, and there might rise a need for your intervention in the future.
You can use this opportunity by requesting to be subcontracted as a Freelancer to do the task under your terms, where you manage the location from which you will perform your job, you control what to wear, and the hours you’ll be working at, and the whole bunch of conditions that made you become a freelancer in first place. As a matter of fact, I’m writing this blog post at 04:13am, so if you’re a night owl like I am, then you’ll be most productive around these hours, and this will benefit both you and your employer regardless of being on your task out of the regular working hours.
Re-check your job’s contract and make sure you’re in line with its termination conditions
I started as a Freelancer, then was approached by an online board’s member after he watched me interacting with web-dev topics, he asked me to pass an online test, then he hired me for a simple job, and after my successful completion, he offered me a job in his company, and he started first by sending me a contract, and asked me to read it, and only sign it after I’ve agreed with all its terms and conditions.
I remember it clearly stating, if I were to leave the company, then I won’t be able to join any nearby or competing one, that operates within the same region of London, and that will go up for a period of two years, and that I have to inform them 2 months before I resign, otherwise I will have to compensate whatever ramifications my resignation has caused.
Luckily for me, when I made the call I was far away in Eastern Europe, and then the 2 months issue was on my mind, so I was talking to my ex-employer over Skype, and was telling him my final decision, and he was kind enough to tell me, I should take a break, think it through, and not make any rush life changing decisions that I might regret in the future, and I told him I’m absolutely positive about it, because I was motivated by something bigger than being in that job, and that was me forming a family of my own, and attending to those needs.
2 months had passed, and we crossed each other again over Skype, we chatted a little bit, and was asked again about my decision, and I re-affirmed it, and that ended right there knowing that I violated no terms I signed up for, and I didn’t have to worry about being sued or asked to pay any back-breaking compensations.
You might not be as fortunate as I was having such a nice employer, so you could end up borrowing money to pay it back to your employer to let you go, or I’d rather call it, to buy back your freedom and break away from a modern day’s form of the chains of slavery, so pay a lot of attention to this part.
Make sure to get rid of all of your old credentials
Although this should be the responsibility of your ex-employer, it never hurts to be pro-active yourself. So, make sure to get rid of any old credentials related to your old company, things like the company’s email, the access credentials to their backend, their servers, their SSH keys, any Software Licenses that belonged to them, return back any hardware that they gave you, such as a laptop, a smart phone, an ID card, office keys, and whatever materials tangible and non-tangible that reached you because you were part of that company.
You can go the extra mile, and reach out to their tech department, and ask them to remove your credentials from their logon system, and don’t forget to CC the ex-employer themselves as well.
This will put both you and them at ease from the fear of any security breaches, which will occur regardless of how secure any company has been set up, so it’s better to be cleared from any potential accusations before they happen.
Stay close with your ex-colleagues afterwards
You never know, big start up companies were started by some ex-company developers, great products were made out by ex-employees with a different/better vision of how that original product should have been done, and the examples are plenty to name one, although a simple Google Search would bring you tons of cases.
In addition to all of that, your ex-colleagues might send you new clients, who might become long term clients of your own, and who will contribute to your success hugely.
I remember I was reached out by a client after he saw my profile on a Freelancing Platform, and part of the project needed serious web-design, and he asked me to give him reliable recommendation for it, so I thought, well, I know a “sister” company of my ex-company that specialized in web-design, and concept-art, so why not send him to them, since he was also based in East London, and so I did.
After a couple of days, he got back to me, and told me that was way out of his league, and the 3.5K GBP quote that was given to him was too much to be spent on the design alone, and I snapped right away hearing that, there was another friend who popped in my head, and I told him, well, I know an independent freelancer, who may charge one fifth of that if you want to get on track with him, he agreed, my friend accepted, and the project was completed, and everyone was happy.
I heard from my friend later, that he was approached more than one time by the same client for other design work, and this shows that keeping contact with people who really know what you’re capable of will only be deemed highly profitable to your career, and a good asset to your portfolio, as there is nothing that beats the word of mouth of someone you trust.
At this stage, I supposed you’ve quit, and I have to tell you, the game has just begun for you, and the bumps are so happy aligning themselves in your road to tackle you from being successful, so keep reading while I share with you my ups and downs throughout my journey, and learn from my own mistakes, so that you won’t fall in the same traps as I did.
