IBM locks horns with engineering colleges
Poornima Mohandas -
Friday, July 11, 2008 12:25 PM
IBM has really cheesed off a number of engineering colleges in India with their latest campus hiring "policies". They gave offer letters to several students in November-December 2007 after a rigorous round of tests, group discussions and interviews. In early June 2008 they went back to the same campuses to subject the selected students to yet another test.
A professor I spoke to at a prestigious government-run engineering college was particularly indignant: "When we asked IBM for an explanation, they said it was a new “corporate policy”. We have asked IBM never to come back to our campus. We don’t care about them, let them not come back if this is the way they behave.”
College of Engineering in Pune was even more peeved. They took the matter to the media to get some indignant attention. Said a professor in the college, “Thankfully we have a rule of three jobs per student so many of my students had other options.” IBM had initially given offer letters to about 80 students from College of Engineering Pune but finally only about a dozen joined the multinational giant.
IBM says it needs to keep up its stringent quality and therefore the new test after test practice. This year itself many students refused to take the second test conducted by IBM. They instead looked for other jobs and moved on. Perhaps big blue should plan a bit more before hiring en masse instead of being on the back foot.