Resign when the boss is on vacation?

baseball1988

I have been job hunting for the past months. I'm afraid that I will get a job offer when my boss is away but would like to leave in good terms and relationship.

Recently, I've been slowing down with my job search and haven't applied in the past weeks because my boss is almost going on vacation for 2-4 weeks.

Should I wait until my boss comes back on vacation then apply for more jobs constantly? or keep applying and if i get a job offer, ask the potential employer to delay the start day for a few weeks?

Find more posts tagged with

SAVE $250 on Your Boot Camp — Use Code "EXAM26"

Exclusively for TechExams members for Infosec Boot Camps starting before April 30, 2026

View Boot Camps

Comments

erpadmin

Wow...that's an interesting one, even for me.

Bottom line: you leave on your own terms. It's not always going to be convenient for anyone when it's time to move on. Speaking on my own experiences, I have yet to give any employer advance warning on when I'm leaving. It's almost akin to accepting a counter-offer, something I would never do either.

Once you made a decision to leave and you get an offer that you like, you're only required to give a two-week notice. That's the only thing you can do and if done right, you won't burn any bridges. No matter what, if you're a good employee, your employer won't want to see you go, but you have to do what's best for your situation. This only matters if you want to use your boss as a reference, but I have yet to do that too.

Legally, your HR department (in the US) is only required to verify dates of employment, title and salary. They cannot legally discuss the reasons of your leaving or any other matters of your employment.

powerfool

I have encountered this myself, on two separate occasions.

1) Boss had a "House MD Complex" even though I was more like House than he was. I was extremely productive, yet he tried to paint a picture that I wasn't and that I wasn't contributing. It was a three person department, including him, that supported 5k users; we did an excellent job, overall, and one of our members was very non-technical. I was the sole networking person and I also did systems. How could I have not been productive? Anyhow, I decided to look for a new job and I actually discussed it with him. At that point, he decided that I needed to have one by a certain date, which I thought was fair. I found my new job and he was on vacation. I decided that I would let him know upon his return. The morning of his return, he sent out another email that we was taking another week of vacation the following week. So I decided to put it off, again. While he was out on vacation, however, I was going to be working the primary election; we had previously submitted all of our planned time off for the entire year. So, I sent out a reminder that I wouldn't be in and I took the day off. I was ripped apart by the president of the company when I returned and I just handed in my resignation and indicated I would only be providing them with one-day's notice because I went out of my way to be considerate of them and I had this day off planned (as a matter of fact, it was a standing known fact that I work ALL elections, beyond that I actually had this listed on my days off for the year). The boss returned, I furnished my home Sonicwall that I used for testing VPN connectivity tied up loose ends, and that was it. I was supposed to be in DC the following three days, so I wasn't going to quit, stay around one day, take off three days, and then come back in for a few days... especially given that treatment. There have been no hard feelings... I regularly talk with him... I just can't work with him.

2) The next job I was essentially harassed by a recently former colleague to come with him to another job. I thought about it long and hard and decided to make the move (but reluctantly... because it was a VB programming position, and I had been doing network/systems for seven years since my last programming experience, which was Java). The boss was on vacation and I decided I was just going to do it based on my previous experience. They called him to let him know and he worked on something behind the scenes. They made me a counter that I couldn't refuse (even though that is against my personal policy). Given that I was the only senior guy remaining and I was working on IT strategy for the boss who couldn't run a department to save his life, I felt it was sincere.

The moral of the story... you have to do what you think is right... and that may change based on your circumstances and experience. I still don't know what the right answer is. In the first experience, I wish I could change that and just give it immediately.... and vice versa on the second experience.

N2IT

erpadmin wrote: »

Legally, your HR department (in the US) is only required to verify dates of employment, title and salary. They cannot legally discuss the reasons of your leaving or any other matters of your employment.

And to be quite honest from some articles I have read and people I have talked to they are leary of doing this anymore. There is 0 value in telling someone any information about former employee. One company just implemented this and they won't even answer the dates questions anymore. Literally all they say is "yes we had an employee named Joe Doe here or no we never did" and that is it. I also spoke to an HR manager about this, who's daugther and mine play on the same team and he verified this being correct. Saying his organization still did the last title, dates of employment. But was thinking about changing that process to remove as much risk as possible. If you restructure the process to leave out any information about employees you drive risk down. Most break downs occur at the process level hence why they want to go to this new model. I don't know if every company is moving to this, however this is a process that is trending upward.

Zartanasaurus

Keep applying. By the time you go through the interview process, he will likely be back or almost back from vacation anyway.

petedude

erpadmin wrote: »

Legally, your HR department (in the US) is only required to verify dates of employment, title and salary. They cannot legally discuss the reasons of your leaving or any other matters of your employment.

Let me add to erp's useful post a bit. What HR can/has to say depends somewhat on state/local laws, but. . . In many cases, they CAN say more, yet will hesitate to do so because it might open them up to liability. For example, if HR staff says to your potential new boss "yeah, he worked here from January to March but was always late", that could open them up to a slander lawsuit even if you WERE late (i.e. they are damaging your reputation).This is why many HR folks are limited to dates/title/salary, and may only go so far as to state "we would not rehire this person" if asked. These constraints are also why some large companies channel ALL requests for references through the HR department, so they do not get opened up for liability suits by actionable comments from pointy-haired bosses.

All that said, you might find some smaller companies won't care and will say what they want-- what will you do, sue them into oblivion? Some of these guys would just file bankruptcy and redo their operating paperwork under another name if they had to. Some of these folks will say what they want and simply assume you can't afford money or hassle for a lawyer. It especially pays to leave on good terms with smaller businesses if you can.

And to the OP's main question-- I think it'd be bad form to leave a boss while he's out, except under these circumstances:
1. Your job, and/or relationship with the boss suck very badly.
2. An offered job is simply too good to pass up and you would miss out on a huge opportunity if you waited.

shaqazoolu

Zartanasaurus wrote: »

Keep applying. By the time you go through the interview process, he will likely be back or almost back from vacation anyway.

This is the first thing I thought of too. I wouldn't stop at all. By the time you interview, get an offer letter and do all the paperwork required, your boss will be back.

I just put my notice in on Wednesday to start a new job and it took over a week to go from interview to offer letter. One thing to note too is that I had previously worked at this company and a good friend of mine was the hiring manager so he pulled my resume and interviewed me first and did not have to interview anyone else. They were also very motivated to get some help in there. Without those factors, I think the "typical" hiring process would easily take much longer.