Listen before you react, and find out what is actually driving it: growth, compensation, the work itself, or you. Do not open with a counteroffer, because money rarely fixes a problem that was never about money and it resets the clock without resolving anything. Fix what you can quickly and honestly, be clear about what you cannot, and prepare for the possibility that they still leave.
Why interviewers ask this
Interviewers want maturity rather than panic or offense. The signals they look for are curiosity about root cause, honesty about what you can genuinely change, no guilt or manipulation, and pragmatism about knowledge transfer. How you handle this also becomes a retention signal for everybody else, since the team will hear about your reaction, so composure matters more than the individual outcome.
How to structure your answer
- Thank them for telling you, then diagnose the real driver.
- Avoid leading with money or emotional pressure.
- Commit only to changes you can actually deliver, with dates.
- Reduce key person risk in parallel, without punishing them.
Example answer
The first thing I say is thank you for telling me, and I mean it, because most people do not tell you until they have already signed. Then I try to understand what is pulling them, and I ask about their last six months rather than about the other job, because the other job is a fantasy and the last six months are real. In the case I handled, a strong engineer was two years into maintaining a service nobody else understood, bored and quietly terrified of being the single point of failure forever. That was fixable: we cross trained two people over a quarter and moved them onto a new platform piece. They stayed, and the bus factor fix was worth doing anyway. What I do not do is throw money at it as an opening move, because if the problem is growth then a raise buys you six months and a more expensive resignation later. I also start reducing key person risk regardless, quietly, because respecting their decision means preparing for it.
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See how it worksFollow-up questions to expect
- What if the driver is compensation and you have no budget?
- How do you tell the rest of the team if they do leave?
- How would you spot this earlier next time?
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