Want to return to the employer you just quit? Here’s how to know if you can “boomerang.”

The word "boomerang" in Silicon Valley is used to describe someone who leaves a company for another company - but ends up coming back to the original one. Although I've been in the Valley for more than 20 years, I try to stay away from using our oft-ridiculed language which can, in the wrong setting, sound inane. But with regard to this particular subject, boomerang is really an apt way to describe this phenomenon. (See here for a relevant post written by LinkedIn's head of recruiting, Brendan Browne.)

While I’m incredibly supportive of people who are ready and excited to pursue their next great career step, I'm also clear that many people may leave a job in a frustrated huff and can't ever imagine returning to their prior place of work. But in the cases where you find you really miss what you used to have - whether it's your former manager's style, the excitement of the work, or the culture of that company - you can actually go back.

At LinkedIn, we are proud to maintain an active alumni network that helps us stay in touch with our former employees and helps them stay in touch with each other. As LinkedIn’s co-founder Reid Hoffman wrote in his book The Alliance (with Ben Casnocha and Chris Yeh), lifetime employment may no longer be a reality for many employees, but a lifetime relationship between a company and employee can endure.

In 2017 alone, we’ve had nearly 20 people return to LinkedIn after leaving the company for another opportunity. Some of these boomerangs had been gone up to three years before returning, while a couple returned after just a few weeks in another gig.

So, what’s the “right” way for an employee to boomerang out and back into a company? It all starts with how you left in the first place.

• Starting with the basics, were you a solid performer and did you leave on your own terms? If you were succeeding at your job and receiving regular performance evaluations complimentary of your work, it’s likely the door will be open for you to return if the right role is available for you. If you were let go for performance reasons, it’s almost guaranteed you would not be welcomed back (even to another group within your company) for a whole host of HR and legal reasons. And let’s be honest, you probably wouldn’t want to come back to a place that didn’t value what you brought to it anyway.
• Did you avoid blindsiding people with your resignation? If you were pretty open with your manager about the fact that you were considering outside opportunities in advance of giving notice, your manager (if they’re still there) will likely be much more open to taking you back. It’s the shock and feeling of being abandoned with no warning that makes people feel less warm and fuzzy about your departure, so they may be less interested in hiring you back if their trust in you is broken.
• Did you give the proper amount of notice and have a good succession plan in place for your role (especially if you were a senior person who was leading a team)? If you resign with no plan for how the work will still get done after you’re gone, people will be unhappy that they have to fill in for you and rush to figure out a solution for your role on top of everything else they’re trying to do in a given day. The people impacted by your departure, including your manager, will likely not be supportive of bringing you back, as they’ll have distinct memories of you leaving them holding the bag.
• Did you leave in the middle of a critical project? Few things at work are worse than having someone who is working on something really important for the company and doesn't see it through to completion. People will not fondly remember someone who left the company in a lurch by not following through on their commitment to deliver something of import. You won’t be remembered as trustworthy and reliable, which could broadly taint your reputation and eliminate the option to ever return to the company.
• If you transitioned your projects with a sense of professionalism by leaving detailed documentation about the status of each project and who to contact for what in your absence, people will be appreciative and feel that you left the right way. If you were managing people at the time, it’s also a great practice to write a performance evaluation for the people who work for you, so there is something for a new manager to refer to when it comes time for performance reviews.
• After you gave notice, did you still come to the office with regularity and stay as involved as possible? If you start coming in at 11:00am and working from home often during your two-week notice period, people may feel that you took advantage of the situation and made their lives more difficult during this period.
• Last but not least, did you leave to join a competitor? If so, people may feel betrayed, making it nearly impossible to repair the situation enough for you to boomerang. Also, when someone leaves a company for a competitor, a lot of people at the company tend to be in the know, so the circle of distrust can widen, and there will be even more people, likely senior ones, against the decision to have you return.

My mom always impressed upon me the importance of not burning a bridge under any circumstances, and I’ve really tried to apply this philosophy throughout my personal life and professional career. But it’s almost never more important than when you depart a company. 

Because you may end up finding out that the grass isn’t necessarily greener. And contrary to popular belief, in the professional world, you can’t always go home.

(Thanks to Brian Cheng for helping me pull the relevant LinkedIn data and to the several folks who helped me polish this from an editing perspective!)