Leaving a Job? Prepare a List of Exit Tasks

Changing jobs can be an overwhelming experience, but it does not have to be. The key is planning. I year ago, I was in the midst of planning my retirement. Many months before my last day, I was making notes about tasks large and small that would all need to happen within a fairly short time frame. When those final days came, it was early a matter of putting the plan into motion.

Below is a list of my exit tasks. Everyone’s situation is different, so my list will not work necessarily work for you, but it provides a start.

Letting your associates know where to find you:

1. Look at your Outlook Contacts for who will need to know our new address, e-mail, and phone.
2. Look at your pay stub for those who take payroll deductions and talk to your payroll department on how to make these transitions to your new employer.
3. Think through journals, magazines, and other regular mailings which come to your business address which should now be mailed somewhere else.
4. Determine how your old school or office will determine what mail addressed to you needs to be forwarded and how the process of getting your mail to you will be handled.
5. Talk to the IT department to determine if mail coming to your business address can automatically be forwarded to your new e-mail address.
6. Compose a single-mail containing new contact information and send to everyone who will need it.

Letting the world know where to find you:
Is there a web presence which should be updated with new contact information?

1. Personal website or blog (including profile)
2. Facebook page
3. LinkedIn page
4. Webpages from other companies which make reference to you

Who else might need to find you?:
List the online services for which you have accounts for which you will need to update contact information (especially new e-mail address)

1. reQall
2. Animoto
3. Blogger
4. Edulogs

Getting ready to move:

1. Make a list of what you own personally.
2. Are there personal belongings you want to leave behind? Prepare a letter stating what you are donating. Save for tax purposes.
3. Has anyone borrowed something of yours? Work on getting that stuff back now.
4. Do you have anything that belongs to the school or office that you have at home or in your car? Make plans to return.
5. Have you borrowed anything from a co-worker? Make plans to return.
6. What electronic documents do you need to copy and take with you? Copy them to a flash drive.
7. Copy your Outlook pst file to a flash drive. If you archive your Outlook data, copy the archived pst file to a flash drive. Install them on your new computer now if possible just to be sure your data is secure.

Erasing your tracks from your phones:

1. Delete speed dials programmed into land line and business-issued smart phone.
2. Delete any other information programmed in your land line or smart phone.
3. Change your greeting to provide your new location to callers. Do this on both your land line and smart phone.
4. Reset mailbox password to the default on the land line.
5. Research how to delete all information in mass from your model. When you turn it over, it should void of:

• Speed dials
• Contacts
• Pictures
• E-Mail messages
• Calendar events
• Tasks
• Voice mails

Erasing your tracks from your computer:

1. Identify what information will be needed by others, organize it, and provide copies to the appropriate people.
2. As stated earlier, copy information you will need to a flash drive. Be sure to copy your Outlook pst file and outlook archives.
3. Wipe the entire hard drive clean before leaving. Use a program which overwrites every sector, in effect filling the entire hard drive with bits of information.

Get ready for a hectic final couple of days. Invariably, people who have had a month or more to ask you questions will wait until the last day to ask you to "make a list" of one thing or another or want to know where they can go to find certain information. It's tough to handle what you need to do while filling those requests at the same time.

With a little luck and a lot of planning, the last day can be the stress-free, enjoyable experience that it should be.