27 Oct, 2008, 0817 hrs IST,Shreya Biswas,
The 24-year-old Siddharth Arora (name changed) is one among them. He lost his job last week with a US-based legal process outsourcing company. When he got the confirmation letter for this job 11 months back, he was on cloud nine — an attractive salary and an interesting job profile in intellectual property. But today Siddharth, who completed his masters this April, is looking for a job. He is ready to settle for much less (around Rs 4-5-lakh) compared to Rs 7 lakh that he got with his first job straight out of the IIT campus. He has already applied to 50 companies and is still awaiting a response.
Siddharth’s is not a stray case. Close to 13 of his colleagues from top four IITs — Kanpur, Kharagpur, Bombay and Madras — have also been laid-off.
For almost all of them, the announcement was a bolt from the blue. “Pre-lunch, everything was normal, post-lunch everything changed,” says Mr Siddharth. “At least they could have given us some time or they could have cut our salaries to save the situation rather than laying off people. Our joining was delayed by a month. If they got the signals earlier, they could have at least informed us,” adds Siddharth. These are are not isolated cases of IITians facing the brunt of the job-market slowdown. In fact, according to media reports, 15 students of IIT-Kharagpur have already received regret letters from companies that had earlier extended job offers.
But Prof BK Mathur, chairperson of IIT-Kharagpur’s placement cell, said: “None of the students got in touch with us or have informed (us) about anything like that (regret letters).” According to him, some new employers have got in touch with the institute after media reports on ‘regret letters’ surfaced and have extended job offers to students who have reportedly received such letters.
A faculty member in charge of placements at another top IIT confirmed to ET that five students from the batch that passed out in April 2008 have been given the pink slip. A similar fate awaits another 3-4 students from the same batch, informed sources.
It’s not the thought of not been able to land a new job, but the salary and job-profile compromises that they have to make that trouble these laid-off IITians. No wonder then that most of them are weighing their options more carefully now.
Been subjected to such workplace heat so early in their career, these IITians have a word of advice for their juniors who are yet to pass out of the institutes. “Delay your entry into the job-market, go in for an extra qualification as it will add value to your CV,” says Prachit Manchanda, (name changed), an IITian and ex-employee of another MNC IT company in Bangalore.
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