Why don’t you break your notice period?

Let us say you get an excellent offer with almost 100% increase and it’s like your dream come true offer. It comes with a rider that you need to join them within a month.

It’s not a hurdle if your notice period is also 1 month. If it’s more than a month, then all the problem starts. What would you do in such situation?

A) Break the notice period with your current employer and join your prospective employer.

B)  Forgo your dream offer and try for another suitable offer.

C) Convince your prospective employer on why you need more than a month and you cannot join within a month. If not convinced, be prepared to forgo the offer.

D) Commit to your prospective employer that you can join within a month hoping that you can convince your current employer for early relieving.

Though I don’t have any data to share, I can say, out of my experience, that many tend to choose the option – D and Option –A and only a few choose option-C which is the right option to do. Here, I am talking about most of the junior level and sometimes middle employees too.

Why option – C is the ideal option?

# When you resign and intend to leave your current employer, the last and the least expected from you is serving the notice period fully so the knowledge is transferred and the business risk is mitigated to a reasonable extent. 

# If the notice period is already known to you as part of your terms and conditions, there is no point in expecting early relieving. Any such expectation is only unfair. Honor the commitment that you’ve already given to your current employer rather than trying to them about the commitment given to the prospective employer.

# When you convince your prospective employer about your criticality and the importance of serving notice period fully with your current employer, it only shows you in a better light. If are not willing to break a notice period in a company, you are not going to break it in another company. It just demonstrates your values.  Any good employer will appreciate your point and if you are losing the offer on this ground, be assured that you have not chosen the right employer and don’t have any regrets.

# Short-term view is great because you can see all the benefits immediately when you break the notice period. But the long-term disadvantages will overweigh the benefits that you get now. For example, let us say your employer wants to do H1b visa for you. If you don’t have the relieving letter from any of your previous employers, it’s going to be a hurdle in your visa processing. To give another example,  let us say, you are joining in a managerial / leadership position after few years, the chances are that your employer is going to do BGV (Background verification) with all the employers that you worked with. Any negative BGV report will not go in your favor in joining that company. This is surely going to hurt your career in the long-term. So do take a long term view.

# When you over commit to your prospective employer and you are not in a position to get relieved early, you lose your offer and you lose any likely career opportunity that you had with your current employer.  You rub both the employers on the wrong side and what is at stake is your career. It’s indeed a Big stake. So it’s not worth overcommitting.

# When you break your notice period with your current employer, your credibility is lost with your prospective employer too. What they could have on back of their mind, you would tend to repeat what you did before. After all, the past behavior can very well be an indicator for future behavior.

What is happening on the ground:

Though it’s not an ethical practice, many corporates including the big ones do hire candidates without relieving letter ie, they are willing to onboard those can break their notice period and join immediately. They also look at short-term view in terms of projects on hand and the resources required immediately.  As long as there are employers willing to compromise on this, there will also be employees ready to bend and break the rules.,

However more than the employers, the bigger stake is for the employees.  For corporates, it’s like men may come and men may go but the Business will go on. But for you as an employee, the career lost is lost.

So Never ever break your notice period under any circumstances. 

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