Your joining is postponed…and postponed again…and one more time…and now we can’t accommodate you.
A corporate story I came across — someone close to me had to go through — that made me question corporate work ethics and their impact.
Dear Corporate Giants, what’s making you so mean?
I’m outlining an experience you offered, let me know how it sounds to you. Let’s call our candidate ‘Ken’.
January: The recruiter of the XYZ company offers Ken an interview. He goes through the process of giving technical and managerial rounds for around a month.
February: Ken lands an offer with XYZ, he needs to serve a notice of 3 months with his current company ABC, so he’s given a start date of the first week of June. The role requires him to be on-site.
Ken offers his resignation to ABC. They wish to retain him, but things don’t work out and now our Ken is happily serving his notice period. He has also relocated to get acquainted with the new city he’ll be working in.
And then begins the drama….
May: 15 days before the joining Ken is informed by the recruiter from XYZ that his joining has been postponed to July mid. He has already, almost, served the entire notice period.
He tries to keep his calm and requests his manager to extend his notice.
Thanks to the good relations he has with his manager at ABC his notice is extended by 2 months — till 1 week before the date of joining XYZ.
July: 1 week before the date of joining Ken is again told his joining has been postponed to October start.
Take a moment, and imagine the horror, for he has now exhausted his notice, and his relation with his manager.
Where does it leave him?
He takes back his resignation with ABC.
Tell me if it’s not embarrassing. Tell me if it’s not frustrating. Tell me how you would have felt.
And then there’s more…….
Ken gets a call…..again…..from XYZ.
September: Ken gets a call from the recruiter to confirm the date of joining. This time Ken “requests” them to extend his joining by a few months since he couldn't resign before his current project ends and would again need to serve 3 months' notice.
Declined.
He sends this request over email to the senior recruiter who was in touch with him at the time of hiring.
Declined.
He loops in all the people who were involved in his hiring process. (Now more in need of a closure than a positive outcome)
The “issue” (sadly that’s what he is now) gets escalated to an individual who says she would be the authority who could take the final call.
The final call?
Request declined.
Ken moved on with ABC.
XYZ obviously is big enough to not care.
The Impact
Ken prepared for months for interviews and cracked the company he wanted to go into because of the high regard he had for it.
He gave it 10 months of his corporate life; they couldn’t give him 3.
He questioned his capabilities
His confidence went down manifold.
He wasn’t able to appear for more interviews in the anticipation of joining XYZ.
This isn’t just Ken’s story. It happened to many candidates last year, who were looking forward to their joining in 2023 with XYZ. They shared their experiences on LinkedIn, and tagged the highest possible authority for help.
Some even went unemployed for a long period as they had already handed in their resignations, and were informed 2 to 3 days before their joinings about the delays.
Not everyone was as lucky as our Ken, who had a manager who knew he would always go full beach.
It’s sad, it’s painful, and it’s everything that shouldn't happen to anyone. There probably should be a mechanism to address these grievances and provide some relief here and there.
That’s all for today. I hope none of us become the Kens of the corporate jungle.
