4 Stages of Employee Departure: How did that job become available?

Much of our attention has been on government and corporate downsizing. Challenger, Grey, and Christmas reported earlier this month that layoffs increased a stunning 140% in the first half of 2025.

According to LinkedIn News, a  report from New York City’s Office of Management and Budget disclosed an even more startling figure. New job creation in New York City has dropped about 98% year-over-year since 2024.

But this does not mean you cannot get a job. Job openings occur all the time. The trick is to find out about them before the competition. Job openings happen when employers lose team members they cannot replace with AI or outsource offshore.

It is useful for you, as a jobseeker, to understand what happens when an employee leaves voluntarily. That is because you want to know when and how to pursue that open job. Sadly, when your dream job is advertised, it may be too late for you to apply.

A job opening has its own project management or systems development life cycle, as explained in part by Jane Roqueplot, a behavioral analyst specializing in career advancement, resumes, and job searching at ProfilingPro on a Zoom discussion:

1. The employer and coworkers have no idea someone is leaving,
2. Coworkers find out someone is leaving,
3. The employer finds out someone is leaving, and
4. A job opening is advertised.

It is too early for you to apply for an opening when no one knows the job opportunity exists. But it could be too late by the time the job is advertised.

The employer does not know if someone plans to leave.

Logically, you cannot apply for a job when the employer does not know someone is leaving. Of course, as we noted in our Navigate What’s Next LinkedIn newsletter, employers collect resumes constantly for future reference. These resume collection efforts generate some of the notorious “ghost jobs” found online. This does not mean that you should spend a lot of time intentionally applying for ghost jobs. It does suggest, though, that applying for a ghost job may not be a waste of your time. An employer could dip into its existing database when the role does open.  Most of the jobseekers that sent those resumes are probably not going to respond, so you could snag an interview.

Hypothetically, you could learn from a friend that they hate their job and plan on quitting. But they will not appreciate it if you ask their boss “Hey, Joe is going to quit. Can I have his job?”  Once Joe or June tells their coworkers, though. start thinking about making your move.

Coworkers learn that a colleague is leaving.

An employee may tell his or her coworkers they are leaving before they officially inform “the boss.” This has not happened often in organizations I have worked at because coworkers have assumed, probably correctly, that word would leak to leadership before they are ready to resign. Also, I’ve known coworkers that walked around the office every morning announcing they hated the job and were going to quit. They stayed until retirement.

It is time to prepare your campaign for the job, though, if you do learn through the industry grapevine that a key person you can replace intends to quit. This is because you will want to act right away during the next phase in the cycle.

The employer finds out someone is leaving.

Your best chance to “seize the day” Is at a point in the process when the employer knows someone is leaving. The reason is that they may choose not to advertise the job. Instead, they may engage a recruiter to do searches on LinkedIn for jobseekers with the right skills and experience for the position. Or, they may go “old school” and ask friends and acquaintances in the industry whether they know someone who can fill their vacancy.

This does not mean the job will not be advertised online. The company may have to advertise the job anyway for a variety of legal and organizational reasons.

The employer advertises an opportunity.

Most of us apply as quickly as we can to posted openings we want to fill. And, much of the time, we are “ghosted.” We never hear back. Occasionally, we get a carefully worded email that tells us how wonderful we are without moving us forward.

The time to apply is before the job is advertised. Make certain that friends, acquaintances, your professors, and anyone else you can think of in the real world and online know what kind of work you do, and that you want to know about new opportunities.

Try to make online and offline connections with employees in companies where you want to work so they can refer you in. Follow companies on LinkedIn that you want to work at and connect with employees. A career coach who uses LinkedIn recruiter told me you will appear higher in search results when you have more connections to the company.

Concluding Comments

You will improve your chances of finding work faster when you understand the life cycle of a job opening. There are still opportunities even when the job market looks grim. You need only one job, so it does not matter whether there are 1000 openings or 66,000 openings. You only need one employer to say “yes.”