HCL Technologies delays joining date of freshers

HCL assured students it would give joining dates by August

‘Employee First, Customers Second, Meaning Please?’, read one of the placards held by an engineering student standing outside HCL Technologies Ltd’s Noida centre yesterday, as the company has delayed freshers’ joining dates.

HCL Tech, which has been growing at a scorching pace, is yet to give a joining date to engineering students who received offer letters in 2011 and were to join anytime between August and December 2012. The students are from the 2012 pass-out batch.

After the protest, staged in front of HCL Tech centres in Noida, Hyderabad, Chennai and Pune, the company said that by August 2013, it would let the students know about the joining date.

“The delay has been due to the changing business requirements. Our business plan gets over in June and after that, we will have a firm visibility and hence, (we) have told the students that by August, we will give them a definite time,” said Nitin Pande, vice-president, HCL Tech.

The company will honour all offers it has given out. Students will also have an option to join HCL Infrastructure Ltd, a sister company, that has some vacancies, he added. The starting salary at HCL Infra is Rs 2.75 lakh and that for the software services is Rs 3.25 lakh.

The company, however, did not disclose the total number of students it hired from the 2012 batch. According to reports, each of the company’s centres saw a group of at least 80-90 students, and around 30-40 students in smaller cities, protesting.

When contacted, some of the universities these students were from said the company did not communicate them about any delay in the joining dates. “We were not kept in the loop. However, students did receive emails saying all the offers will be honoured. We will speak with the company on students behalf,” said a placement officer of a large engineering college in Tamil Nadu.

The sudden delay in hiring from HCL Tech has taken many analysts by surprise. “Unlike TCS (Tata Consultancy Services) and Infosys, HCL Tech’s freshers hiring numbers are very small. It would be around 20 per cent. Hence, it should be able to absorb 4,000- 5,000 students on an annual basis,” said an analyst on condition of anonymity.

Analysts also point out this uncertainty in hiring is linked to the falling performance in its core software services business. “If you look at these numbers, the core software business has not been able to grow, the maximum growth is coming from infrastructure services. Its infrastructure business has seen 40 per cent incremental growth over the last 12 months,” said another analyst from a leading brokerage firm.