Job searching during a PIP: what to tell interviewers

Start looking now, whichever way you hope it ends

Yes, look. Start now, keep it off the employer's systems and out of every conversation at work, and do it whether you intend to pass the plan or to leave. A search is not a decision to go. It is the second track, and the people who have been through a plan and written about it afterwards are consistent on one thing: running both tracks at once is what worked, and treating the plan as either doom or nothing is what did not.

Four reasons, none of them a forecast about your plan.

• The employer's own advisers describe a parallel track of their own, run on a calendar rather than on a conclusion; yours is the mirror of it.
• On a work visa the search is not optional at all, because the clock that starts at the last day does not wait for the plan to finish. Four countries, four different mechanisms rather than one clock with four numbers on it: the Home Office decides, and its guidance directs sixty days; the Dutch period runs from the contract's end and is capped by the permit; German law states no period at all, and the one people quote is European; and the Irish numbers everybody finds first are a redundancy scheme.
• In Ireland the record of the search is literally the compensation.
• And in several of the countries below the law gives a dismissed worker paid time to look, which is worth knowing before anyone asks you to use holiday for an interview.

What follows is not interview coaching. It is the three things the usual advice leaves out: what a prospective employer can lawfully learn about you where you live, what time the law gives you, and what the search is worth in money if the ending is ever weighed by a tribunal.

What quietly means

Not on the employer's laptop, phone, email or network, and not in working time unless the law or the contract gives you that time (below). The current employer is the one reference everyone withholds, and hiring managers expect it.

In the United Kingdom the official guidance to recruiters says as much: take up references at the final stage, alongside a conditional offer, and get the applicant's permission before contacting a current employer, because an earlier request can expose the search and put the applicant's job at risk.

That guidance is addressed to the recruiter, not to you, but it is a footing for asking that your current employer not be contacted before an offer is on the table. Contact after a written offer that is conditional on that reference is the one concession most candidates can live with.

Colleagues are a separate question, and the page on the meetings answers it in one line: do not tell colleagues more than you need to. The framing of what is happening is a story you control only while you are still employed. This page is about the people outside — interviewers, recruiters, and whoever runs the check.

What an interviewer can actually find out, by country

The popular answer is American and assumes a background check that confirms employer and dates. That is roughly right in the United States and wrong, in different directions, in most of Europe, where the document a former employer produces is often fixed by law — sometimes in the worker's favour. Country by country, from what this guide's files carry; where a file does not yet cover references, the entry says so.

• United Kingdom. No general duty to give a reference at all, unless the employer promised one in writing, the role is regulated by the FCA or PRA, or it was agreed — a settlement agreement being the usual way. A reference that is given may be as thin as job title and dates, or may state performance, recent relevant disciplinary records and the reason for leaving, provided it is accurate, fair and not misleading and the employer can evidence it; a reference that shows you unsuitable for a job is allowed if it is fair and accurate. You may ask the new employer for a copy once you start, but a reference given in confidence sits outside the UK GDPR right of access, so a subject access request may not produce it. Where the role is regulated, the neutral reference stops working altogether.
• Ireland. This guide's Irish file does not yet cover references. What it does cover is the other half of the question: in Ireland the search is not something a prospective employer learns about but something an adjudicator counts, and the section on the log below is the Irish one.
• Germany. A written Zeugnis at the end of the employment is a statutory right: the simple form states the nature and duration of the work, the qualified form adds performance and conduct on request, and the text must be clear and may carry no coded marks. Commentary recognises an interim reference, the Zwischenzeugnis, where the worker has a legitimate interest — a change of supervisor and an application to another employer are both on the list — so it can be asked for while your standing is whatever it was, before anyone has decided anything.
• Netherlands. The getuigschrift is a statutory document and the law fixes its shape. On request the employer must issue it, stating the nature of the work, the hours and the dates. How you performed, how the contract ended and — if the employer gave notice — why, appear only if you ask for them. An employer that refuses, ignores that choice, writes untruths or codes the document is liable for the damage. By default, then, the certificate after a contested plan says what the job was and when.
• France. This guide's French file does not yet cover references or the certificat de travail; the French page covers the endings.
• Spain. This guide's Spanish file does not cover references. It does cover the six paid hours a week the code gives during the notice of an objective dismissal, in the section on time below.
• Portugal. At the end of any contract the employer must hand over a certificado de trabalho stating the dates of admission and cessation and the position or positions held — and it may contain anything else only at the worker's request. Portugal sits with the Netherlands: the document a prospective employer can be shown records neither the inadaptação nor the reason for leaving unless you want it to.
• Estonia. This guide's Estonian file does not yet cover references or the employment certificate. It covers the time to look, below, which in Estonia is the widest right of the nine.
• United States. No federal rule at all. One employee-side firm describes most employers as giving neutral references — title, dates, sometimes whether you are eligible for rehire — and says a plan is uncommonly disclosed in a reference check and that you are not required to disclose one to a new employer. What a verification database carries is employer, dates, title and status; nothing this guide has read shows a field for the reason you left. What can carry a plan's shadow is the rehire answer, and one named employer's rehire ban is the example. Three states let a dismissed worker demand the reason in writing — Minnesota within fifteen working days, Maine on request, Texas at the employer's option — and that document, once it exists, is what your account is checked against.

What to say when they ask

One principle carries every version of the question. You owe no account of the plan. You owe the truth about anything a check can confirm: your dates, your title, whether you are still employed, and — if it comes to that — whether you were dismissed. The advice that circulates online splits between those two, and the half that says to describe a role that was eliminated or a reorganisation that never happened is the half to refuse. Three things make it expensive.

• A detailed reference in the United Kingdom may lawfully say the employment ended in dismissal.
• A statement of reasons in Minnesota or Maine is a document you can demand and a prospective employer may be given.
• And in the United States wrongdoing discovered after the fact cuts off the remedy even where the employer was in the wrong, which is what the Supreme Court held in 1995 about evidence acquired after a discharge — the rule that makes a substituted story cost something later rather than nothing now.

The four questions, and the shape of an honest answer that gives nothing away:

• Why are you looking? Answer in the terms of the role you want and the work you want to do more of. Nothing about the plan, nothing about the manager. Both branches can say this truthfully, because both are true.
• Can we speak to your current manager? Not while you are employed there; here are people who can speak to my work. If a recruiter insists, the concession is contact after a written offer conditional on it.
• Were you dismissed? If you were, say so in one sentence and stop. Own the part that was yours in words that are not the employer's, without the manager in the sentence. The one employee-side account this guide rests on says that if you are asked about difficulties in a previous role, the answer worth giving is how you took the feedback and what you did with it.
• Have you ever been on a performance improvement plan? Rare, and asked directly it is the one question where the guide's sources run out: what they carry is that you are not required to disclose a plan, and that telling any interviewer more than you need to is the trap. Neither is an answer to a direct question, and this page will not invent one. What holds is the principle above — do not deny something a reference or a statement of reasons could contradict.

When an offer arrives while the plan is running

An offer changes the arithmetic of everything on the resign and severance pages, and the order in which you do things decides how much it is worth.

1. Get the offer in writing, with its conditions listed.
2. Let the conditions clear — references, checks, the start date — before you tell anyone at your current employer anything.
3. If an exit is being negotiated, settle the reference, certificate or Zeugnis wording with the current employer before you resign, not after; it is cheap for them and the leverage is gone once you have gone.
4. Only then decide how to end it. Resigning costs something different in each of the ten countries, and in several it is the single most expensive option available. In Spain the exit is papered as a dismissal for a reason; in Estonia the graceful mutual agreement is the trap; in France the negotiated exit is the safe one by design.

An offer is also leverage. If the current employer would rather you left, the severance page sets out what is on the table in each country, and if the conversation about a package arrives before you have decided anything, the meeting page's script for it is short: reply in writing, ask for the four things, sign nothing in the room.

The time the law gives you to look

Once notice has been given, several of these countries give the worker time off to look for work in working time. The right is often quoted without its conditions, and the conditions are the point.

• Estonia looks like the widest right of the nine. Where the employer cancels the contract extraordinarily, it must give the employee, during the notice period, free time to a reasonable extent to look for new work — the official commentary names attending interviews — paid at the average wage. An Estonian employer has no ordinary dismissal, so on this guide's reading every cancellation an employer can make is inside that condition, the capability ground included. The statute does not say so in as many words, and it does not carve the capability ground out either.
• Germany. After notice of termination, the employer must on request grant reasonable time to look for another position, whoever gave the notice. The time itself cannot be contracted away; whether it is paid is commentary rather than statute, and the prevailing view is that pay continues only for a short absence and can be excluded by contract. Ask for the time and ask in the same note whether it is paid.
• Portugal. A worker under notice of a dismissal for inadaptação has a credit of two working days a week, paid, divisible across the week at the worker's initiative, on three days' notice to the employer.
• Spain. During the fifteen days' notice of an objective dismissal, six paid hours a week to look for work. The disciplinary route carries no notice and no hours.
• United Kingdom. The statutory right to time off to look for work belongs to an employee under notice of redundancy with two years' service. A capability dismissal is outside it. What you have is what the contract, the employer or a settlement gives — notice paid in lieu is the settlement's usual form.
• France, the Netherlands, Ireland and the United States. Nothing statutory in this guide's files. In the Netherlands most endings are settled and the settlement usually carries garden leave, which is the time; in the United States a later separation date on payroll is the ask that costs the employer least.

The job-search log, and the three countries where it is money

Keep a dated record of every application, contact, interview and refusal, with the reason where one was given. That is ordinary prudence anywhere. In three of these countries it is also money.

• Ireland. Compensation for unfair dismissal is built from evidence of financial loss, and the duty to mitigate is examined closely: the test is whether you sought comparable work, and an adjudicator has limited a winning claimant to four weeks' pay for want of that evidence. The Irish page has the decisions.
• United Kingdom. The compensatory award is what the tribunal considers just and equitable, having regard to the loss the dismissal caused, and the statute applies the common-law duty to mitigate to it. What that asks of a claimant is not yet illustrated by a decision in this guide's files, and the practical step does not wait for one.
• Germany. If you contest the dismissal and win, back pay is reduced by what you maliciously failed to earn elsewhere, and since 2020 the employer may demand a written list of the placement proposals the employment agency sent you — occupation, hours, place, pay — to argue exactly that. The disclosure proves nothing by itself; a log of what was offered, what you did and why is the answer to it.

Everywhere else the record costs nothing and settles arguments later, including the argument with yourself about whether you did enough.

Nine countries' rules, and none of them stay still

Fairhanded is not a law firm. Nine countries' rules on references, time off and mitigation cannot stay current on one page for long; the chip at the top carries the date the sources behind it were last checked, and the entries that say a file does not yet cover something mean exactly that. Before you rely on any of it in a negotiation or a claim, take it to an employment lawyer where you live.