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Adith Charlie

Mumbai, Aug. 21 Passing out of college with a letter of offer from a well known IT company in these uncertain times could entail a wait of up to one year to join the rolls, as 21-year-old BSc graduate Poornima (name changed) from SIES College in Navi Mumbai found out.

Last August, as a second year student, she had accepted an entry level job with L&T Infotech when the company approached her college. She was to join the company after she passed out in 2008. Cut to August 2008; Poornima has completed her course only to be told by L&T Infotech that she could join only in calendar 2009, without specifying when. Around 30 students at Poornima’s college, who had been offered jobs by L&T Infotech said they were in the same situation.

A spokesperson for L&T Infotech told Business Line: “In keeping with our business requirements, we are deferring the joining dates of freshers.” The company did not elaborate further.

Mr Manik Taneja, Analyst with Emkay Global Financial Services, says in a report that reduced hiring by the Tier 1 vendors is a result of lower visibility on clients’ spending budgets. Joining dates for freshers who were given offer letters in 2007 (in their penultimate year of college) - are getting stretched well into the middle of the next year. Of the 18 students hired by Bangalore based Mindtree Consulting from Ramrao Adik Institute of Technology at Navi Mumbai, several have got joining letters dated April 2009, according to Mr Vivek Dwivedi, students’ representative head of the engineering college.

A Mindtree spokesperson said: “Freshers from colleges have been inducted in three batches and the last batch will join around March 2009. Unlike other companies we do not give a date of joining to students only to postpone it later. The dates given to students are the final dates, and we will stand by them.”

Nasdaq-listed Cognizant Technology Solutions says that campus recruits (to whom offers were made a year ago) have already started joining the company; but this process will continue into calendar 2009. “Clearly with a reduction in revenue guidance, we would not need as many people as we originally thought . We still intend to bring all those people on board. However the timing of that will be somewhat spread out over longer period, which is something common in the industry right now,” Mr Gordon Coburn, CFO, Cognizant, had said in the Q2 Earnings call with investors.

The country’s second largest IT firm, Infosys Technologies, is confident of completing induction of students (from last year’s college batches) till the end of calendar 2008.

“As of now, we do not think, this would stretch into calendar 2009,” said Ms Nandita Gurjar, V-P & Group Head HRD, Infosys.

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