The organizations are conducting exit interviews to gather data for improving working conditions, to find out the underlying reasons for employee turnover and also for retaining talented employees. This article focuses on the concept of exit interviews, their purpose, who should conduct, how to conduct, when and where to conduct and also how to use the data collected from exit interviews for the benefit of the organization.

An exit interview is a meet ing between the departing employee and at least one representative from the company (either someone from the Human Resources Department or the functional head of the employee). Employees who are leaving the organization voluntarily are sources of priceless information. Exit interviews can be termed as confessional interviews by the departing employee. The outgoing employees must be those who have voluntarily resigned rather than getting laid off or fired. It is an effective HR tool that is used by organizations to find out from an outgoing employee the reasons behind his leaving the organization. Exit interviews can provide valuable insights to the employers to know how to retain their talented staff and improve their work culture as well as the workplace environment. Previously exit interviews were not conducted on a routine basis because it was considered to be futile to ask the departing employee"Why do you go?" The employers were more focused on getting the position filled as soon as possible instead of determining how the vacancy could have been avoided. Their approach was based on the assumption that the market was full of unscrupulous, unmanageable and unappreciative workers. With the passage of time, the organizations have now started to realize the significance of exit interviews. The type of exit interview method to be used depends upon the discretion of the top management and the HR department of the organization. Some of the methods available for conducting these interviews are:

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