The short answer
Six questions do the work. What finally made you decide it was time to move on. When did you first start thinking about leaving. What would have kept you. What did you like most, and least, about working here. Where are you going, and what is different there. Would you consider coming back. Then a 0 to 10 recommend score to close.
The questions matter less than the setup. Ask them after the resignation is accepted, so there is nothing left to negotiate. Have someone neutral ask, not the manager and ideally not the HR partner the person has worked with. Open with a confidentiality line that is true. And keep it to a few minutes; on the exit calls we run, the average conversation is under three minutes and the probing ones run four to five.
The rest of this guide is the reasoning, the follow-ups by reason, the questions to stop asking, and the part that turns exits into a retention plan: scoring.
Why exit interviews get the polite answer
The exit is the one moment an employee has nothing to lose, and it is when most companies collect their least honest data. Three reasons.
The employer is asking. Nobody burns a bridge on the way out, so a question from the company gets a sanitised reason: better opportunity, personal reasons, relocation. The real one, which on our cohorts is very often the supervisor, stays unsaid.
It is a form. Written exit forms get skipped or half-filled because nobody owes a form their honesty. Response rates crater and what comes back is too thin to act on.
It happens too late or not at all. By the time the interview is scheduled, the person has served notice, done the handover, and mentally left. Or they were a field employee who never came back to the office, and nobody called.
The six-question core
"What finally made you decide it was time to move on?" Note the word finally. It asks for the trigger, not the backstory, and the trigger is usually the honest answer. Follow up once: was there anything else that contributed?
"When did you first start thinking about leaving?" This one is underrated. If the answer is month three, your problem is onboarding or the manager. If it is right after the appraisal, it is pay or growth. The timing points at the fix.
"What would have kept you?" Not "could we have done anything", which invites a polite no. Ask for the specific thing. Often it is smaller than a counter-offer.
"What did you like most about working here? And least?" Ask both, in that order. The liked-most answers are your employer brand in the leaver's own words. The liked-least answers cluster fast across a cohort.
"Where are you going, and what is different there?" Next employer and industry tell you who you are losing people to. What is different tells you the gap: title, pay band, hybrid policy, a manager they already know.
"If things changed, would you consider coming back some day?" Rejoin intent is a retention signal and a sourcing signal. A yes with conditions is a name for your boomerang list.
Close: "On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend working here to a friend?" Last, never first.
Follow-up questions by reason
One good follow-up per reason gets you the detail that makes the reason actionable.
- Manager: Was it the day-to-day interactions, or how feedback and growth conversations were handled?
- Growth: Was there a specific moment you realised the path up was not there?
- Pay: Was the gap something a fair correction could have closed, or had it gone past money?
- Workload or hours: Did that change recently, or was it always like this?
- Culture: Was there a moment that made you feel this was not the place for you?
- Relocation or personal: Would a different arrangement, remote, a transfer, a change of shift, have made staying possible?
Questions to stop asking
"Was there anything we could have done?" It is a yes-or-no question dressed as an open one, and the answer is no. Ask what would have kept you.
"Rate your manager from 1 to 5." You will get a 3 from people whose manager is the reason they are leaving. Ask what the manager did well and what they would change.
"Did you feel valued?" Leading, and unanswerable honestly on the way out.
Anything that reads a list of reasons aloud. People pick whichever option they heard last, or the least dramatic one. Ask open, map to your categories afterwards.
How to score exit interviews so they add up
A hundred honest conversations are worthless as a hundred transcripts. Score every one into the same fields.
Reasons for leaving: up to three per person, ranked, mapped onto one taxonomy so that manager pressure at the Pune branch and manager pressure at the Kochi branch are the same category. Tag each reason as a push factor, a pull factor, or a stay factor, and as controllable or not. Manager, growth, pay, and hours are controllable. Relocation and personal reasons mostly are not.
Satisfaction ratings across pay, manager, growth, workload, and culture. What they liked most and least. Next organisation and industry. Rejoin intent. The recommend score, rolled up to eNPS.
Red flags: harassment, abuse, coercion, or serious misconduct raised unprompted gets flagged immediately with a severity and a short narrative, and goes to someone senior the same day. Wanting to leave is not a red flag. Ordinary dissatisfaction is not a red flag.
Then compare what HR recorded as the reason with what the person actually said. The gap between the two is the single most useful chart in the program, because it is the size of the problem you did not know you had.
Who should run the exit interview, and when
Someone neutral. The moment the company itself is asking, the bridge-protection instinct kicks in. A third party, on the phone, opening with a confidentiality line that is true, gets a different conversation: what you say goes to HR leadership, never to your manager with your name on it.
After the resignation is accepted and before the person has emotionally left, which for most people is inside the notice period. Calling after the last working day works too, and for people who have already gone, it is the only option; the honesty is often higher once the final settlement is done.
In their own language. Candid answers should not depend on speaking the head-office language, and the frontline employees you most need to hear from are the ones least likely to fill an English form.
Reaching people who have already left
Most exit-interview non-response is a connection problem, and connection problems are solvable. Three call attempts spaced hours apart inside working hours. Callback capture, so "call me tomorrow at four" becomes a scheduled call rather than a hang-up. A short WhatsApp follow-up when calls do not land, offering to finish the conversation in chat, book a slot, or just leave a score, then stopping politely.
Track the outcome of every attempt so you know exactly where each exit stands, and never file a call that never got past the opening as a completed interview.
AI exit interviews: how they work
An AI counselor phones each departing employee, opens in English and asks which language they prefer, states the confidentiality line, and runs the script above with follow-ups where an answer is thin. The call is recorded and transcribed, with a second high-accuracy pass so the analysis reads what was actually said.
Every call is scored the same way: ranked reasons on the taxonomy, satisfaction, eNPS, liked and disliked most, next employer, rejoin intent, red flags. HR gets a per-employee PDF with the transcript and recording, and an organisation report that splits controllable from uncontrollable attrition, shows the gap between HR-stated and actual reasons, and comes with a retention action plan: immediate moves for the next quarter and structural fixes prioritised by how much attrition each would prevent.
The reason it works where HR calls do not is the neutral voice. People finish the call feeling heard rather than processed, and they say the thing they would not have put on a form. That is what Goodfit exit interviews are built to do at the scale of hundreds of exits a month.
An exit interview template
In order. Everything after the confidentiality line is a question; nothing is read as a list.
- Opening: Thanks for taking a few minutes. Everything you share is confidential and goes to HR leadership only, never to your manager with your name on it.
- 1. What finally made you decide it was time to move on? Was there anything else that contributed?
- 2. When did you first start thinking about leaving?
- 3. What would have kept you?
- 4. What did you like most about working here? And least?
- 5. Where are you going, and what is different there?
- 6. If things changed, would you consider coming back some day?
- Close: On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend working here to a friend? Anything else you want to add?
Frequently asked questions
What are the best exit interview questions?
What finally made you decide to move on; when you first started thinking about leaving; what would have kept you; what you liked most and least; where you are going and what is different there; and whether you would consider coming back. Close with a 0 to 10 recommend score. Ask them open, after the resignation is accepted, with someone neutral asking.
How many questions should an exit interview have?
Six core questions plus one follow-up per answer and a closing recommend score. On phone-based exit interviews the average conversation runs under three minutes and a probing one four to five. Longer scripts lower completion without adding much.
Should exit interviews be anonymous?
Confidential, not anonymous. Open by saying that what the person shares goes to HR leadership only and never to their manager with their name attached, and mean it. Full anonymity makes red flags such as harassment impossible to act on and stops you linking reasons to units and managers, which is the whole point.
When should an exit interview happen?
After the resignation is accepted, so there is nothing left to negotiate, and inside the notice period while the person is still reachable. Calling after the final settlement also works and sometimes gets a more candid answer. Field and frontline staff who never return to an office should be called, not emailed a form.
Who should conduct the exit interview?
Someone neutral. Not the manager, who is often the reason, and ideally not the HR partner the person has worked alongside. A third party on the phone, in the employee's own language, gets the honest reason. AI exit interviews exist because that neutral third party is hard to staff at the volume most companies lose people.
What is an AI exit interview?
A phone call from an AI counselor to a departing employee, in the language they choose, that runs a structured script with follow-ups, records and transcribes the conversation, and scores it into ranked reasons for leaving, satisfaction ratings, eNPS, next employer, rejoin intent, and red flags. Results roll up into per-employee reports and an organisation-level retention plan.
How do you analyze exit interview data?
Score every interview into the same fields: up to three ranked reasons on one taxonomy, tagged push, pull, or stay and controllable or not; satisfaction by area; eNPS; next employer; rejoin intent; red flags. Then cut the results by business unit, region, tenure, grade, and manager, compare the AI-found reason with what HR recorded, and split controllable from uncontrollable attrition to decide where retention budget goes.