Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is holding up onboarding of lateral hires with 1.8 to up to 15 years of experience by three months amidst project commencement delays, multiple sources in the know told Moneycontrol. This is coming at a time when the Indian IT sector has already taken a hit by macroeconomic headwinds and is facing project deferrals and ramp-downs as their clients cut down on tech budgets.
Over 200 lateral recruits across cities including Bangalore, Pune, Kochi, Bhubaneswar, Delhi NCR, and Indore to name a few are impacted by the delays.
These joinees were hired between January and April and were initially facing onboarding delays by a month. Many of them got two to three subsequent new joining dates. On July 10, however, many received emails stating that their joining dates are getting pushed to October.
The information about a deferral in onboarding date hasn’t even been communicated proactively to those waiting to join the company, according to multiple people Moneycontrol spoke to.
One of the impacted employees who has over 10 years of experience, was recruited for a particular project. In fact, he tells Moneycontrol that the company repeatedly followed up with him during his notice period to ensure that he was joining, but come last week, there was no word on his onboarding formalities.
“It’s when I started following up with them that I got to know that my onboarding date has been deferred. When I asked them what the reason was, they said they were informed by the management last week that onboarding will be done in phases. But they aren’t confirming any date,” he says.
Having worked with several IT majors, he adds that he has never seen these kinds of issues in other companies.
“I’m jobless now and I’m looking out again. In the current market, getting a job at my level of experience is also very tough. There’s a family to take care of, kids, loans on my head. It’s a very tough situation. I can hardly manage for a month,” he says.
Another impacted joinees was hired at a 65 percent pay hike from a rival top IT firm. This person’s last date at the previous organisation was in the fourth week of May.
“They were hiring aggressively in January and February. They offered good hikes too. My last day of work was in the fourth week of May in the previous organisation. And I was to join TCS in the second week of June. Suddenly in mid-May, I received an email from HR that my new joining date will be in the second week of July because of project commencement issues,” the person told Moneycontrol seeking anonymity.
“My family and colleagues advised me to wait given TCS’ good reputation. The company also started re-onboarding people after June 20. Until today, July 10, onboarding happened. But I got a call later in the day saying that my joining has been deferred to the next quarter, to the first week of October. I have a family to feed, how will I manage? I have started looking out for jobs now,” the person added.
According to TCS’ LinkedIn page, the company has around 5,296 open jobs to be filled in. Queries sent to TCS didn’t elicit any response at the time of publishing and will be updated if the company chooses to respond.
A third employee with less than two years of experience has seen his onboarding date changed for the fourth time, after being laid off by his previous company earlier this year. When he asked the reason behind the same, he was informed that this was a decision taken by the top management.
Upon reaching out over a possible onboarding delay, those waiting have received emails stating that as discussed, their date of joining is rescheduled and that the new date will be reflected on TCS’ portal later.
Grappling with hiring scam
This development is happening while TCS is already grappling with another major hiring scam that came to light less than a month ago. Several staffing firms were found to be bribing senior TCS executives in the company’s Resource Management Group (RMG) which outsources and deploys temporary associates on a project basis, to get preferential business opportunities.
In relation to this, TCS sacked six employees and banned six staffing firms. Another three employees are being investigated.
TCS chairman N Chandrasekaran also said that the company is now looking into the entire supply management process to examine “what the weaknesses are, and will completely tidy the process to ensure that they do not have such incidents.”
Volatility in demand
Even as TCS bagged a few major deals and renewals with its existing UK clients, Chandrasekaran had alluded to difficulties and volatility in demand from customers in the near term.
“When there is uncertainty in the global economic situation and higher inflation or slowing growth, companies will calibrate their spending. Whether it will happen in this quarter or after two quarters, it will happen. So certain discretionary spending companies will make a choice. It also depends on the amount of capital they want to spend at this point in time,” he had said.
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