Professionals share their woes on jobs

Chennai: Twenty-two-year-old K. Lavanya was grinning when she secured an offer letter from a reputed IT firm while she was still studying at Sai Ram Engineering College in Chennai. But the happiness of the first-generation graduate of her family was short-lived as the company cancelled her offer letter after a grueling one-year wait.

Lavanya is not alone. She is just one among thousands of students who were recruited on campus by reputed companies, given hopes of appointment every now and then and were finally asked to appear for an assessment test which was meant for “high-end technicians.”

Lavanya’s tale is tragic as the bank from where she availed an educational loan is hounding her and her father, who runs a small eatery shop in Chennai. “My dream of bringing the family out of financial problems is shattered. I have nowhere to go now. Wherever I apply, people ask what were I doing for the past one year. Even if I explain to them, none seem to understand,” she said.

Lavanya was offered a job by L&T Infotech in September 2014 with a pay package of Rs 3 lakh per annum when she appeared for a campus interview with the company. After she finished her degree in 2015, the company’s employee portal approved her offer letter and she was waiting for the joining date. “Not just that. We were called for a meeting with the company’s HR executives and were made to believe we will be offered the job as promised. But all turned out to be a lie since they asked us to appear for a test that even high-end technicians would find it difficult to crack,” she said.

“Now I stand alone and my career is in question. No one wants to take me in and my father cannot repay the loan,” Lavanya said. The major problem being faced by these professionals is that their next batch has also passed out this month.

Another student, who was offered the job at the same company, said the exam was “very tough” and they were not even intimated about the syllabus. “I came all the way from Coimbatore to write the exam since we thought this was just a formality. But we were in for a shock when we found the question paper so tough that even high-end professionals said they would find it difficult to answer it,” the student, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said.

This is probably the first time that a reputed company has cancelled the offer letters of students who were recruited by them during campus job drive. There were cases of another private IT company delaying appointment of recruits by more than a year.

Majority of students whom DC spoke to said the major problem they face is questions of why they were “idle” for the past one year after completing their degree. “I feel it is not a good start to my career. After spending lakhs of rupees to complete my degree, I am not able to answer questions being asked by my friends and relatives. Everyone wants to know why I have been declined a job by the company that recruited me,” Vignesh, another student, said. Efforts to contact L&T Infotech HR executives failed.