Campus Hires Face Six-Months Delay At Amazon India

Recently, there have been several posts on LinkedIn about companies and startups deferring the offer letters of several college recruits. Adding to the pool of such businesses, reportedly Amazon has deferred offer letters of several campus hires from institutes including Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and National Institute of Technology (NIT).

According to an Inc42’s source on condition of anonymity, “Amazon has deferred the offer letters of some software developers.”

In a LinkedIn post, a user mentioned the names of some startups including Indeed, Insofe, Udaan, AiDash, and more to have deferred offer letters of college recruits. In the post he mentioned that students of the 2022-23 session across IITs have been suffering from this issue.

Talking to Inc42, an Amazon spokesperson said, “In light of the challenging economic conditions, we’re delaying the start dates for some of our college hires by upto six months. We’re offering assistance to help address any financial impact. Amazon remains committed to university recruiting and developing the next generation of leaders and builders. This decision does not involve revoking or rescinding any offer letters that have been extended to students.”

Commenting on the overall global layoff scenario, Teamlease CEO Kartik Narayan told Inc42 that the large IT and tech companies, amidst the global economic disruption, are compelled to reassess their hiring requirements.

He further added, “The significant challenge arises from the extensive hiring that occurred during the pandemic, driven by the surge in digitization, digitalization, and global digital transformation. Regrettably, business cycles are susceptible to various factors, and the ongoing global slowdown necessitates these companies to make difficult decisions.”

In January this year, Inc42 reported that Amazon layoff plans may affect employees across verticals including HR, tech, and Prime. In addition, the company had also rolled out the Voluntary Separation Programme (VSP) under which primarily the software development engineers had resigned. 

Further, the source informed that the management had also merged various tech teams when several roles were eliminated in Gurugram and Bengaluru offices of the company. 

Following this, the Maharashtra Labour Ministry had issued a notice to Amazon India after it was speculated that the global layoffs at Amazon might impact around 1,000 employees in the country.

The notice had summoned the ecommerce giant representatives to appear before CS Shinde, assistant labour commissioner, in Pune. 

The complaint was lodged against Amazon, in November 2022, by Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES). The complaint stated that the body had been receiving several complaints from Amazon India’s employees for forcing them to quit the company voluntarily. It also accused the ecommerce giant of violating labour laws.

Talking to Inc42, another fresher informed that he was hired by Cognizant in August 2022 but the project that he was hired for, has been delayed since December 2022. According to him, at Cognizant, the freshers haven’t been laid off but they have not been assigned any new projects. 

According to data compiled by Inc42 from several HR tech platforms, the laid off employees in India account for 10%-15% of the total layoffs globally. 

The data states that other than Amazon, Meta laid off <100, Google 400-500, and Microsoft sacked 300-400 employees.

Amazon’s statement has been updated on 29th May, 2023 at 6:00 P.M, on request of the company.

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