Notice periods and buyouts: the last negotiation of the old job
Ninety-day notices are standard in Indian BFSI and painful everywhere. The buyout conversation has rules.
You have the offer; now you need the exit. Indian financial services runs on sixty-to-ninety-day notices while Singapore and Dubai employers often want you in thirty. The gap between those dates is where offers quietly die. Manage it actively.
Know your actual position
- Check the letter: notice is mutual - what they can do to you, you can do to them
- Buyout clauses: many contracts allow payment in lieu; some managers pretend otherwise
- Leave balance: earned leave can offset notice in many institutions
The resignation meeting
Resign in writing, keep it three lines, and ask for the exit conversation separately from the resignation itself. Managers negotiate hardest in the emotional first hour. State your preferred last day, offer the buyout or leave adjustment if your contract allows, and present a real transition plan - a named successor and a documented handover. Employers release organized people earlier; there is nothing to gain from detaining someone who has already left mentally.
The new employer side
Tell the new employer your true notice on day one, and ask explicitly whether they will fund a buyout - many will, but only if asked before the offer is signed. A start date agreed on fiction becomes your first credibility problem in the new job.