Tesla cancelled 21-year-old's 'dream' internship three weeks before she was set to join

Tesla

In April, it was revealed that Tesla is cutting jobs and reducing its total workforce by 10%, which meant hundreds of employees were laid off. A report by The Financial Times stated that Elon Musk sent a memo to Tesla staff where he mentioned how the company had to go “hardcore” and cut costs and jobs. However, the job cuts weren’t limited to existing employees. According to a report by Business Insider, Tesla also cancelled internship of students who were supposed to join.

The report quotes Brook Gura, a college senior student at the University of Texas, Austin, who was hoping to work at Tesla as a recruiting intern in the company's human resources department faced a similar experience recently.

She was recruited as an intern in Tesla's human resources department and spent about three weeks interviewing with the company earlier this year before signing a contract with Tesla on February 29. As per the report, she said that her offer with Tesla was revoked unexpectedly.

Gura shared, “It was exciting. I was looking for a big corporate internship. And it was close by. I wouldn’t have had to relocate.” She further added that she had turned down other internship offers and was due to receive a pay of $26 per hour.  She was also supposed to start on May 20.

Earlier this week, she received a call from an unknown number and an official email two hours later from a Tesla recruiter to call her back. When she called back, Tesla had revoked her internship contract.

Tesla also announced layoffs last month and since the start of this year has terminated several contracts. This did not worry Gura in the beginning as she stated, "Interns are relatively cheap compared to full-time employees. I figured if they were trying to cut down, I might even be working more."
However, when she took to LinkedIn asking for professional help and guidance, to her surprise saw several other interns posting about losing their internship offers from Tesla.