Returning to a former company can be lucrative — and a little awkward

Aaron Chester claims his former co-workers weren’t too happy to see him when he returned to his old department at a large university in Florida. “I worked in admissions for a couple of years but left for a new job with a high school district,” says Chester, 38. “I left on good terms but you’d have never thought that when I came back. People were just — I don’t know how else to say it — not nice.”

Chester, who says the time between his two stints spanned 18 months, admits he was hurt at first but says he got over the perceived cold shoulder within two weeks. “I left as a co-worker and came back as their boss,” he says. “I’d be a little upset, too.”

Chester’s previous boss had been moved to a new department and a new campus. “He called to tell me they would be posting his position and wanted to know if I’d be interested,” Chester says. “I told him I was and I went in for an interview the next day. I was hired two weeks later.”

Your prior exit matters

Chester says his hiring was a testament to leaving a job in a professional manner. “Some of the people in our department made a huge, dramatic exit when they left,” he says. “They’d send out a farewell email that basically ripped on our boss or they’d just not show up after they gave their two-week notice. It became this thing in our department, which is kind of weird. But that’s not really in my personality so that’s the approach I took.”

Chester says his departure was mentioned when he interviewed for the job. “They told me that my boss appreciated how it was handled,” Chester says. “I don’t really know what I would have done differently but I’m glad I dealt with it in the right way. I certainly wouldn’t have been hired back if I left in a blaze of glory.”

Buyer’s remorse

Lena Klein, 41, returned to Monsanto in St. Louis after 10 years away. Although she worked in an entirely different division with a new set of co-workers, she said she’d been warned about a pending moment of doom. “My husband worked for the same place twice but quit after four months the second time around,” Klein says. “He told me he was just overcome by this feeling that he’d made a huge mistake after two weeks and began looking for a new job right away.”

Klein says she experienced that same “moment” but any feelings of buyer’s remorse quickly passed. “I got over it,” she says. “Of course you’re going to have some of the same frustrations if you come back to the same company, but you just deal with it.”

Return policy

Sherry Draught, a career adviser in Oakton, California, says people return to previous employers more frequently these days because of high employee turnover and new ownership. “Most people leave their jobs for one of two reasons: money or a bad boss,” says Draught. “When a new owner comes in, they either make massive cuts or invest more money in the business. If they do the latter, they want to build on previous successes. What better way to do that than to tap into previous employees who know the business?”

That’s essentially what happened when Roberta Kent was offered a position last year with a financial planning firm she left in 2014. “We had a pretty horrible manager, not that he was a mean person or aggressive or anything, he was just a bad manager — bad scheduling, bad handling of employees, couldn’t motivate, just incompetent — and it made it really difficult to have the wins I needed to make money.”

Kent says the firm was purchased by a financial technology firm last year. They began calling a few previous employees for feedback and to see if they’d be interested in returning under better circumstances.

“When they called, I listened to what they had to say and realized, ‘hey, I’m a pretty good catch.’ I think the most significant part was that there wasn’t really going to be an interview process. It was basically ‘I’m offering you the job.’ They told me I could come in and take a look around and meet some people but I didn’t need to interview for the position, that it was mine if I wanted it,” she says. “I went in, liked what I saw, heard about my new salary and commission — which I knew my current firm wouldn’t match — and took the job on the spot.”