Digging out a post from my previous blog. Thought this post should be seen by a global audience to see how some Big Indian Service companies deal with employees or potential-to-be-employees. This incident changed my outlook towards a ‘company’ in general. And after this incident I never kept the same respect towards any other HR policy.
The funniest aspect of the whole story is that, the HR person who was involved in this whole incident (which happened in the 2006-2007 time frame) is still with the same company (infact promoted as a Executive HR :O) and she completed her MBA education from the most renowened management institution (famous for its HR education) in India :O [I want to question the basis for her selection to this institution and the basis for her promotion. A person who does not have courtesy, decency and least of all a sense that she is playing with other's careers is selected to a premier institute and is promoted :O, The world is definitely not fair. I will definitely reveal the name of the company in this blog one day, not right now.]
– The post –
What I write here is about an encounter with the HR/Recruitment team from an Indian IT gaint, which is one of the top Indian Service companies. I am NOT going to give the company’s name here… as I am NOT doing any witch hunting here.
To start with, after my wife resigned from the company (I wrote about this in another post of mine), she started applying for bigger ones and made it to this company. People at home were happy that my wife had the calibre to make it big. All this happened in Nov 2006 and she was asked a question in the interview whether it is ok for her, if they post her wherever the company wants. To that she replied, no my marriage is in Feb 2007 and I cannot, so please consider putting me in Hyderabad. To that the person replied, That’s good, you did a good thing by saying this in the beginning itself. She came back home, but was still inconvienient about the fact that she might be placed elsewhere and wrote a mail to the HR here in Hyderabad, looking after recruitment, to consider putting her in Hyderabad.
Two days later my wife received a mail from the company stating that she was being posted to training at Chennai. To this she wrote mail to the same HR at Hyd stating that, please consider my position and consider putting me at Hyderabad. To that there was a reply from the HR stating that “You can join at Hyd, but you will have to wait till Jan”. Then my wife waited till Feb and seeing no mails from them, wrote a mail to the same person asking her [the HR] what the status is. The reply was given by another person who we assumed to be the junior to the HR (we initially sent mails to). He replied by calling us that you will have to wait for another month for the training to commence.
We waited till March, exactly a month, and wrote a mail to him as well as the first HR asking them when it would start. There was no message from their side and my wife went to meet them at their office in Hyderabad. My wife met that person who called her and asked him why is this getting delayed and he said, please bear with us it will take another month.
Like this the replies like “Next” month kept on going and finally we reached September 2007. When my wife called the first HR in Aug 2007, She [The HR] replied saying that “Everyone has valid reasons, we cannot please everyone. You might be offered a training date at Chennai in Dec 2007. Please Wait.”. We knew that applying to another company and joining that company would take at least one month. And since we already have an offer at hand from a good company, why take pains like that. We asked a person whom we knew in that company to know why this is getting delayed like this and asked him to see if he can recommend to the HR team to see to it that she gets a place at Hyderabad.
The person got back to us with a reply saying, the name of the candidate does not appear in the list of people to be offered a job at our company. The reason stated was she did not join on the first DOJ for which she received a mail in Nov 2006.
We were totally shocked and utterly furious on the HR team for telling us to wait eternally for a long time to just get back a news like this. We wrote a mail to the HR people asking them what the actual status is, as we got a message from our contact in the same company stating something different from what they had been saying all the while. To that the HR team replied in mail stating that “As we have already discussed, the offer stands terminated”. We in reply wrote a mail to the HR team as well as CCing their Hyderabad operations head and the Senior HR management asking them why the HR team of a big company like this is so incompetent, and what we should be telling about this company to other people who ask us about it. That HR team does not respond truthfully in e-mails or they keep you waiting for eternally long time.
We got a call from the HR team asking us to come and meet them on Wednesday [19th September 2007] the next, with the offer letter that they gave her. I was telling my wife not to go first and ask them what the agenda of that meeting would be. To that my father-in-law and my dad said, no probs we will meet and see what the out-come would be. I did not reply and waited for this meeting to end. And this is what happened on that day.
HR team was utterly adamant and they told my wife, “We have already sent you a mail regarding your NEW joining date and you did not respond, and hence the offer was terminated.”. My wife said, “I did not receive any”… and “Please show me any mails that you would have sent me.”. The lady [HR] was furious and replied “We have sent them, and we need not justify ourselves to anyone. We have them with ourselves”. To this my wife argued for some time and said “You have made me wait for ten months and now you are still being very unjust to me. Please tell me what I should be telling in any interview as to why I wasted ten months”… and to that the lady[HR] said “Who asked you to wait? You should have INFERRED from our statements about ‘next’ month that you don’t have a place here” and to this my wife got frustrated and said “You are lying to me, by saying that you have sent a mail regarding the new joining date. How can you be like this?”. To that the lady[HR] replied, “How can you blame us like this? This suggests that your attitude is improper and we don’t want such people at our company.“.
My wife got totally vexed with the HRs and got out saying that, till now I had a good impression about your company, Now I have lost all that. My dad accompanied my wife that day to the company and when she came out and told him what happened inside. My dad approached the HRs and said, “See, We understand that some communication gap has occured somewhere and we know mistakes happen everywhere. We are not questioning that, but you should understand that you have spoilt ten months of a candidate, please rethink about this and do justice here for whatever mistakes have happened.”.
My dad was told by the HR team, “We don’t talk to relatives of a candidate. Whatever we had to tell we have told the candidate. We don’t want to discuss anything more.”. To that my dad said, “Look, we are people who have seen bigger companies, so please don’t tell us as if we haven’t seen how to deal with such things.”. To that the reply from HR team was, “We don’t want to compare ourselves with others… We have our own policies and we work according to them… So what do you want finally? ‘An apology mail for whatever has happened till now?’“. My dad said, “Ok please lead me to your Senior HR manager and I will talk to him.“… and the reply from the HR team was… “Sorry, you cannot meet him, he is very busy.“.
My dad is as such a very busy man, and these HR people wasted half a day of his and they give such reckless and immature answers. After coming home my wife felt very sad for how they attacked her for the mistakes that they [HRs] made. My dad was telling us how immature the HRs were.
Initially we contemplated a legal move against the company for damaging my wife’s career for ten months. But, my wife was against it, as she felt it would make her look bad, as it might give a wrong impression to other companies that she creates problems everywhere. So, finally my dad has decided to write a mail to their senior management about how great their Team is and has decided to give them a piece of his mind.
Pratap