‘IT jobs are in jeopardy’

“We’ll get back to you.”

“We’ll let you know soon.”

Such faux promises are beeping out with increasing frequency to engineering graduates who were offered jobs by information technology companies over a year and a half ago.

That’s diplomatese — for telling the hiress to forget about the offers and start looking for other jobs, consultants say.

T. Muralidharan, chairman and managing director of Hyderabad-based talent management and talent acquisition company TMI group, says officially, no company can revoke an offer it made as its reputation will be marred. “The policy of companies is not to revoke offers, but postpone them indefinitely,” he adds.

Indefinite postponement of joining dates means the prospective employee won’t be taken this year at least. Recession last year, coupled with investment banks going bust, has hurt the business of IT firms as these banks form a major chunk of their clientele. This has led to an unofficial freeze on taking new people on the rolls.

Take 23-year-old Rashmi Shah, an engineering graduate from a Bangalore institute. She told DNA Money that in 2007, she received an offer from a top-ranking IT company in the country. Her joining date, which was sometime in June this year, was extended indefinitely.

“It’s October, and there’s no news from them. Whenever I call the company, the only thing I hear is ‘we’ll get back to you’. Initially I believed them, but now I know nothing will come out of this offer,” rues Shah.

She’s now planning to go in for a masters of computer application (MCA), and simultaneously look for jobs “elsewhere”, “maybe BPOs or the manufacturing sector”.

IT firms such as TCS and Infosys have said that this year, they would hire 30,000 and 25,000 people, respectively. Others like Wipro will hire about 15,000.

But these figures suggest only the number of offers that will go out and not necessarily the number of those who will start working with the companies this year, say HR consultants.

In 2007, these very companies had said that they would be hiring upwards of 30,000. For offers made in 2007, joining dates were to be in June 2008.

But the offer letters are collecting dust as postponements abound. “Some of my batchmates and I have accepted that nothing would come out of the offers that were made last year by this Bangalore-based software company. So, some of us are planning to go in for further studies while the rest are hunting for sales and marketing jobs,” says an engineering graduate from Dr Ambedkar Institute of Technology in Bangalore.

Experts say that of the nearly 1,00,000 offers that were made by big and small IT firms last year, only about 10,000 people have actually started work till now. “Jobs in IT are in jeopardy,” says Kris Lakshmikanth, founder chief executive officer and managing director of HR consultancy HeadHunters India.

TMI’s Muralidharan adds that indefinite delay in joining is unfair, as the remuneration loses meaning with time. “Offers were made to engineering students in 2007 and they were to join in June 2008. But 2008 is nearing end and there are no signs of joining dates. Some companies mention the salary in offer letters. How can a remuneration decided in 2007 hold importance nearly two years later?” he asks.