It's a potential career nightmare: You switch jobs, only to realize days or weeks later that it was all a huge mistake.
While it may seem inconceivable, it is possible to make the dreaded employment U-turn.
Bouncing back to a former employer after quitting isn't the résumé killer it once was. People who have done it say it is often worth the humiliation of having to admit a mistake and beg former colleagues to take you back. Returning employees usually end up appreciating their jobs more. And their careers can emerge unscathed, if they give sound reasons for flip-flopping—and stay put for a while in their second stint.
"The new normal is that movement from job to job is tolerated" in many fields, says Bob Damon, president of the Americas for Korn/Ferry International, KFY +1.75% a Los Angeles-based executive-search and leadership-consulting firm. With companies rushing to adapt to changing markets, it is increasingly easy to make mistakes matching people to jobs, he says. And a shortage of skilled workers in many fields makes more companies "perfectly willing to take back good employees."
John Turner
Nashville, Tenn.
- 2012-present HEALTHWAYS
Last title: Director, market analytics - 2011-2012 WALGREENS
Last title: Vice president, client enterprise reporting - 2004-2011 HEALTHWAYS
Last title: Director of business analysis
U-turns happen most often among people in design, tech, media agencies and consulting firms, says Tim McIntyre, chief executive of the Executive Search Group, of South Glastonbury, Conn. Some job-changers say they boomerang back because they miss a workplace culture or a respected boss. Others quit to join an entrepreneurial venture, then return after the opportunity fizzles.
John Turner's U-turn took just 18 months. He left his job as director of business analysis for Healthways, a Franklin, Tenn., company, after a headhunter recruited him in 2011. Mr. Turner had worked with data to help develop and track behavioral-change programs for improving the health and well-being of its customers' patients and employees.
At his new employer, Walgreen Co. WAG +1.07% , he scored a raise, a corner office in the company's Nashville offices and an opportunity to work with a huge health-care database at a company nearly 100 times Healthways' size in both employment and sales. As a senior director of client-enterprise reporting, he oversaw five data-analysis teams in three states.
After seven years at Healthways, though, Mr. Turner had grown accustomed to its intense fitness-focused culture. He wore workout gear to the office, took on-site yoga classes and ran with colleagues at lunch; Healthways Chief Executive Ben Leedle was his teammate for two overnight relay races. And Mr. Turner got free advice over the phone from a personal-health coach provided by the firm.
John Turner, in green, likes lunchtime runs with his Healthways colleagues. Joe Buglewicz for The Wall Street Journal
By contrast, during his first week at Walgreens, when Mr. Turner told his new co-workers he was running a half-marathon, he says "everybody looked at me like I had two heads." Separated from his fitness-minded former colleagues, he says he stopped exercising and gained nearly 25 pounds over the next year.
Mr. Turner thought he would like having a private office, after working for years in Healthways' open-plan headquarters. To his surprise, "I missed the open space," which fostered deskside meetings and easy access to higher-ups, he says. And the sheer size of Walgreens, with $72.2 billion in annual sales and 240,000 employees, made it harder, he says, to make changes or see how his data analysis benefited customers.
Despite its size, says Michael Polzin, a spokesman for Deerfield, Ill.-based Walgreens, the company has an "entrepreneurial spirit," with initiatives like pharmacist-administered flu shots and free mobile apps for refilling prescriptions. The company doesn't comment on individual employees, he says.
Mr. Turner says he liked his Walgreens colleagues and the company's focus on customer service. Like many managers there, he worked at a Walgreens store in his neighborhood over the holidays in 2011. He performed well and was promoted to vice president. But at home with his wife Katie and their two children, Ellie Kate, 4, and Jack, 2, Mr. Turner says, "I was depressed. I wasn't as engaged."
Work & Family Mailbox
He stuck it out for a year and stayed six weeks after resigning to help his boss, then spent several months at home caring for his children and thinking things over. After exploring and rejecting two other job prospects as "exactly what I just left," he says, he decided to try to return to Healthways at any pay, in any job.
One criterion for a successful U-turn, Mr. Damon says, is to explain what has changed since the employee quit. "An employer needs assurance" it won't get dumped again for the same reasons, he says.
In an email to Mr. Leedle in fall 2012, Mr. Turner described his change in attitude. After "some soul-searching," he wrote, he realized he had taken for granted what he had at Healthways, including employees' focus on "creating a healthier world one person at a time." That mantra is sandblasted into the front walkway of the company's headquarters.
Mr. Leedle says he was glad to receive Mr. Turner's email. If employees who perform well "have slipped away, we're happy to re-engage them," he says. Healthways found a spot for Mr. Turner within a month as a director of market analytics, at the same pay as his Walgreens job.
Asking to return was gut-wrenching, Mr. Turner says. "It's hard to admit to an entire company of people you respect that you were wrong." But he got a warm welcome, and no one criticized him.
Employers have different rules about rehiring employees. A few ban the practice altogether, to encourage loyalty. Many others classify departing employees as "eligible for rehire" or not, based on performance, says Paul Rubenstein, an executive at Aon Hewitt, a Lincolnshire, Ill., benefits-consulting firm.
A successful U-turn requires more from the former employee than just a humble-pie moment. Most employers like to see such résumé rebounds "bookended by years of a solid track record on each side," says Executive Search Group's Mr. McIntyre.
Mr. Turner, 41, isn't likely to move on soon. Perks he regarded in the past as "cheesy," such as yoga classes, make sense to him now. "I realized that is what makes us a living lab," he says. He works in the open at a standing desk, fueling impromptu meetings with colleagues at all levels.
David Greene returned to his Cary, N.C., job after a stint with a friend's startup. SAS
Other people bounce back to an old employer after a new venture falls short. David Greene quit his job as an account executive at SAS, a Cary, N.C., maker of business-analytics software, in 2005 to become vice president of a digital-imaging startup co-founded by a friend, where he hoped to use his skills as a photographer.
Mr. Greene didn't leave without misgivings. When he helped tour customers around SAS headquarters a week before leaving, explaining the on-site health-care, child-care and fitness centers and other benefits that keep the company's turnover low, he thought, "I'm crazy for leaving here," he says. He took pains to depart on good terms, giving a month's notice and helping train his replacement.
Just 3½ months later, the startup changed direction and dropped the photo-sharing business that had attracted him. Mr. Greene stayed 14 more months, doing a different job that didn't interest him.
Mr. Greene says he probably stayed six months too long. Korn/Ferry's Mr. Damon recommends moving quickly after realizing a new job is a mistake. "If you decide to leave, every day longer that you spend there is another day you'll feel unhappy and unfulfilled," Mr. Damon says.
But Mr. Greene, 50, says he learned new organizational and leadership skills. And when he reached out to former SAS colleagues in 2007, he was offered and accepted a job within a few days.
