Why Your Dream Job Can Turn Into Dust
Last week one of the top consulting firms halted most of their recruiting in the Indian region. They plan to do similar things in most of their operational cities.
Now this might not be news for most of us. We have seen worse things done to clients and employees by their companies when times get tough. Implementing a hiring freeze for a quarter or two is not a big deal in a tough environment.
Why this particular instance is interesting because they pulled back the offers they gave to newcomers last year.
I know, let me clarify.
Most colleges invite companies to their campus for the purpose of holding a hiring drive for the final year students across all streams and courses. Companies accept or reject those invitations based on the reputation of the institute and its alumni network. Many other factors play a role in this but we don’t need to bother about them.
For students, it marks a season of uncertainty, excitement and anxiety which we call the placement season.
Now, there are minimum requirements of marks which if you uphold you can sit for the tests and interview processes of the companies on campus. It’s pretty standard. If you clear the preliminary rounds of the test then you’ll be invited for the interview and once you crack that, the company will extend you an offer.
It is a pretty easy-flowing, basic process.
So if you get a placement, the company will extend an offer to you starting from the next year, that is, once you graduate from your university. Makes sense.
Now because placements are an important matrix for an institution to promise to their students, the relationship between the university or college and the company should always be maintained. For this to happen, companies are expected to hold the offers they extend to students in the coming year and also students are expected to join the company they got placed at and not ditch them.
To stop students from ditching their on-campus placements, colleges have this rule that after getting a placement you cannot sit for other on-campus opportunities.
On paper it makes sense. I went through it during my placement season, the same anxiety, stress and uncertainty, all of it. I was just lucky enough to only go through it for a couple of months.
This is also what the students of various IITs, NITs and other regional institutions thought. But as we came closer to the date of joining, their offers were revoked. After almost a year.
My issue point is just this, that if you are seeing a decline in profits or revenue. Scratch that, even if you don’t see a decline, if you even see a trend of things not going the way you planned then stop hiring then and there.
No company should be allowed to promise the new workforce, all excited to step into the corporate world, a job and then a couple of quarters later once the date of their joining comes closer revoke those offers.
This practice is not just a setback; it almost feels criminal because according to university rules, once students accept an offer, they are barred from pursuing other campus opportunities.
And what do we do about it?
Nothing. This doesn’t feel right to me.
I see numerous posts on LinkedIn, not knowing what to do, begging for jobs. And these are not some undeserving people who just happen to get a job. These are students from the best universities of this country, the creamiest of the creamy layer.
This is the first corporate experience we are trying to give to our students. How is it fair to them?
What’s worse is the consequences that these companies face, which is a ban from participating in the hiring drive of the universities in question for 3 years or less.
Which surprisingly works in their favour because they were already on a hiring freeze.
After knowing all of this, how can we ask our youth to not abandon us and go abroad? How can it sit right with us? I don’t understand.
We need stricter laws for loopholes like this. We need a stronger united front from the universities of this country to not let this fraud happen to their students.
Finally, I think we need a corporate world with a heart.
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