The news being discussed and debated in many business schools and other campuses since the last couple of weeks is the delayed joining date of management hires from one of the top business schools in India, as announced by an online retailer.
The business school has written to the company in protest and plans to restructure their placement process to avoid such instances in the future. Although this institute might have enough market presence to dictate placement processes to companies coming to the campus, a majority of B-schools don’t wield the same power.
In this case too, students face a question mark with regard to what will happen. Here are my two cents on such situations and what you can do, if you find yourself in them — although I hope none of you face anything like this.
Take care of formalities
Sending formal mails or physical letters, registered with acknowledgement due, will help you create records. Make sure that in such mail or letter, details of the hiring and placement letters are clearly mentioned. Mark copies to B-school’s placement cell. Keep the replies, if any, and copies of your mails, letters, acknowledge due card and other documentsin a sequential order for easy reference.
Next, try and establish a personal connect.
Call or physically go to the company’s office and try to meet the person who came to your campus for recruitment. Request them for a meeting with someone senior in the HR department or business function. During such interactions, keep an open mind and approach them with an objective of establishing rapport and finding facts.
Highlight your continued interest and eagerness to be part of the organisation and request them to give you a clear picture about the delay. Ask pertinent questions such as why they feel that the situation would change, what the alternative is, in case the situation does not change.
Ask them about your appraisals, seeing as how it would be affected as you might join later than planned.
Most importantly, observe the office environment and the mood of the people there. Do you see lot of worried faces or happy faces? Is there an undercurrent of tension amongst people?
A caveat
While meeting with them, the most important thing is to ensure that you don’t use an accusatory tone, turning this into an occasion to vent your anger and frustration.
You can also ask them if they can give you a project work for the duration of the delay, since it would be a win-win situation — you can learn and be able to contribute to the organisation.
However, if the situation pertains to a large number of students or has become acrimonious because of many reasons, personal contact might not be possible — the company might not encourage meetings in case it gets misinterpreted and adds to the volatile scenario.
In such a case, to find out more about the situation and the company, the only option would be to do your own evaluation, based on online research.
But if physical meeting is possible, it would do you well to make detailed review of what you have heard and observed. Be objective in your analysis and at the end of this, you should be in a position to decide whether the various things you have been told are genuine.
This you can do, by checking online as well as talking to senior people about the company.
Your personal checks, coupled with your B-school’s efforts and personal interactions will give you a clearer idea about what the future holds for you.
(The next part of this article will appear in a fortnight)