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India’s biggest e-commerce firm, Flipkart’s decision to defer the joining date of students from the country’s most prestigious institutes – the IIMs and the IITs – has opened a can of worms with regard to campus placements. Flipkart said organisational restructuring meant that the e-commerce giant had to postpone its new campus hires by six months. The company has promised Rs. 1.5 lakh as compensation or “joining bonus” to all campus recruits. Despite the hue and cry, Flipkart isn’t the first company to defer the joining dates of students recruited.
Larsen & Toubro Infotech:
L&T Infotech gave a ‘letter of intent’ to 6500 students between September to November 2014. While some campus hires were given appointment letters in batches, the remaining were made to wait. Sixteen months later, an assessment test was conducted in March 2016 for around 2000 people. While 150 managed to clear the test, approximately 1500 have had their offer letters cancelled. Read TNM’s story here.
McKinsey and Royal Bank of Scotland:
The IIMs have witnessed companies postponing hiring in the past. In 2009, consulting giant McKinsey deferred the date of joining for recruits from IIM-Calcutta and IIM-Bangalore. The firm, however, appears to have placated the students by paying them a portion of their monthly salaries to retain them, reported Rediff. The website also reported that that Royal Bank of Scotland postponed the joining of students from IIM-Bangalore from June to October-December that year. The report goes on to note that the global financial crisis had taken a toll on campus placements in 2009.
HCL Technologies:
Similar to the L&T case now, HCL Technologies left thousands of campus recruits in the lurch after recruiting around 6000 engineering students from over 100 colleges in 2011. A year after the recruitment, the IT firm announced that those offered jobs had to write another test, reported The Hindu. According to the paper, only 1300 out of 6000 students cleared the test, leaving the rest to fend for themselves. Hundreds of students protested across the country against HCL, demanding the jobs they were promised.
Infosys and iGate:
In 2012, IT services firm Infosys deferred the date of joining system engineers by around three months. In a statement, the company attributed the delay to a cost-cutting measure owing to a “tough business environment.” Infosys, however, promised to compensate for the delay by rolling out an exclusive online training program for those recruited.
iGate, another IT firm, also deferred the joining date for 1000 engineers in 2012. The HR at iGate said they were forced to delay its fresher on-boarding plan as the “overall demand environment remains weak,” reported the Economic Times. The company had made 3000 campus offers that year.
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