Wipro to postpone joining of fresh recruits to next year

In these economic times, this was expected. Companies are very pessimistic about revenues in the next few months. They don't want to strain their profit margins by taking in freshers. The decision of recruiting freshers is taken months in advance based on the trends at that time. But when there is a sudden change in the environment (for the worse) new recruits are the first victims.

Pratik Kumar, Executive VP - HR, Brand and Corporate Communication, says, “We have 6,000 campus joinees from last year. We were hoping that we should be able to absorb them during the rest of this year. But now our estimate is that it is likely to spill over to next year. For the next year, we have made 8000 offers. By the end of next year we should be able to absorb all of them.”

Kumar says, “We will put learning modules in place so they can start learning even before joining us. So when they join us finally, the period will be truncated from the mandatory 12 weeks to much lesser.”

I am not amused reading these statements. Let me explain why. Wipro decides to come for campus interviews only if it is the first or the second company. They want to take only the best. But is this the way the best are treated? By keeping them at home for a year. Those students who faithfully (or out of sheer stupidity and laziness) decided not to answer any other campus interviews after they were selected by Wipro are screwed. They would surely have got in some other company right? What an opportunity lost!

Adding insult to injury, wipro will be putting them through "learning modules". This is just a way of saying "Instead of you joining and us having to pay you while you are on training for a couple of months and while you are on the bench for another 4-8 months, you can just sit at home and get trained. In this way, we save money and if the situation turns from bad to worse, we wont call you(no hire-no layoff"

My message to wipro : Great strategy guys!
My message to Freshers : Keep all your options open till the very end!