Employees must report for unpaid training or they will not be hired for the new technology-related jobs
Salil Parekh, CEO of Infosys, has affirmed the company’s commitment to honoring job offers extended over two years ago to graduates who have not yet been employed by the outsourcing giant. Despite the lengthy delay, Parekh emphasized that Infosys remains dedicated to fulfilling these promises.
While Parekh did not provide specific details about when these graduates will begin their roles, he assured PTI, India’s largest news agency, that all individuals who received offers will eventually join the company. He acknowledged that some start dates have been adjusted but maintained that this will not affect the overall commitment.
“Every offer that we have extended will be honored,” Parekh stated. “We have made some changes to the timing, but beyond that, there are no changes to our approach. Everyone who was offered a position will join Infosys.”
More than 2,000 graduates awaiting new jobs
IT workers’ union Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES) has filed a complaint with the Ministry of Labor and Employment, noting that more than 2,000 engineering graduates are in a state of uncertainty as they wait for jobs Infosys had promised them.
As reported by NITES to The Register, these recent graduates were selected for roles such as Systems Engineer and Digital Specialist Engineer during Infosys’ 2022/23 recruitment drive.
The offer letters, sent to these 2,000 graduates, are dated April 2022, compounding their concerns about the delay in onboarding.
Despite not having started making payments to new recruits, Infosys has allegedly kept these prospective employees busy with various activities. According to emails reviewed by The Register, the company has solicited recruits’ participation in various training sessions and assessments, both virtual and in-person, without offering financial compensation for their time.
In these emails, it is warned that failure to attend these trainings could result in the cancellation of their contracts. One of the aforementioned courses has a duration of six weeks, as indicated in the communications.
“Despite successfully completing the pre-training, the promised results were never communicated, leaving the graduates in limbo for over 20 days. To their shock, instead of receiving their joining dates these graduates were informed that they needed to retake the pre-training exam offline, once again without any renumeration,” NITES president Harpreet Singh Saluja told the ministry in its August 20, 2024 letter.
Facing critical shortages in the technology sector
The union also argued before the ministry that Infosys, by keeping fresh graduates in a state of uncertainty, has adversely affected the economy. “The actions of Infosys Limited not only represent a blatant exploitation of young talent, but also pose a significant setback to economic growth,” Saluja wrote. He added that these newly graduated engineers are crucial to the future of the country’s technology industry. By delaying their careers, subjecting them to unpaid work and repeated evaluations, Infosys is wasting their valuable time and undermining their potential contributions to India’s progress.
They now face a critical shortage of employees in the technology sector, despite being one of the leading reservoirs of IT talent globally. According to reports, the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) has estimated that the country has a shortage of approximately 600,000 skilled professionals in areas such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain and cybersecurity. This exacerbates the impact of delays in bringing in new talent.
During its Q1 2024 earnings presentation, Infosys CFO Jayesh Sanghrajka announced that the company plans to hire between 15,000 and 20,000 new employees this year, without specifying whether these figures include the more than 2,000 graduates whose onboarding is still on hold. At the end of the quarter, Infosys had more than 315,000 employees and a utilization rate of 85.3%, with an attrition rate of 12.7%.
