Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), one of the largest IT services companies, has recently deferred the onboarding of lateral hires from October 2024 to January 2025.
This decision was communicated to candidates just days before their scheduled joining dates. Several prospective hires took to platforms like LinkedIn and FishBowl to share their experiences and express their disappointment.
The company said in a statement, “All individuals who have received an offer letter from TCS will be onboarded. However, in certain cases, the joining date may be adjusted to align with our business requirements.”
Impact on Prospective Employees
Candidates like Pravin Zine, who resigned from their previous jobs after receiving TCS offer letters, were left in a precarious situation.
For many candidates, such sudden changes have a severe impact, not just on their professional lives but also on their emotional well-being.
One such individual, Achheylal Yadav, shared his frustration on LinkedIn, explaining how his joining date, originally set for November 4th, was pushed back to mid-January. With just 15 days remaining in his notice period at his current organization, Yadav now finds himself scrambling for alternative job opportunities.
He wrote, “My Last Working Day is November 1st, and I am desperately looking for a new job now. If anyone has opportunities, please reach out.”
Employer Responsibility and Candidate Uncertainty
TCS’s decision to defer onboarding has left candidates in limbo and has sparked conversations across social media.
Some have compared the company’s actions to the term ‘window shopping,’ which refers to candidates exploring multiple job offers while holding one.
What term should be used to describe this kind of behavior from the employer’s side?
This raises important questions about employer accountability, ethics, and the fairness of such practices in the highly competitive IT industry.
When a company defers joining dates, especially after candidates have resigned from their current positions, it can create significant uncertainty and financial distress for those individuals.
Repeated Trends
This isn’t the first time TCS has deferred onboarding for lateral hires. In 2023, the company similarly delayed the joining of over 200 lateral hires across major cities like Bengaluru, Pune, Kochi, and Delhi NCR.
Lateral hires are typically experienced professionals brought in from other companies.
Such recurring incidents reflect deeper issues within the recruitment processes and employer planning at TCS, leaving affected candidates to deal with the financial and emotional consequences of suddenly being left without employment.
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