Job Offers Withdrawn, Internships Now Unpaid
FRONTLINE|May 22, 2020
Engineering and business school graduates stare at a bleak future as job offers are withdrawn or revised, while delays in joining dates add to the climate of uncertainty.
Purnima S. Tripathi
Job Offers Withdrawn, Internships Now Unpaid

The extended Covid-19 lockdown is wreaking havoc on the country’s job market. Not only are existing jobs vanishing because of a complete shutdown of the economy, but prospective jobs for engineering and management graduates, who typically enter the job market at this time of year, are withering. Job offers are being cancelled, and in cases where they are not the inordinate delay in joining brings its own uncertainties. The crisis has not spared even the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) as big-budget companies, including foreign multinationals, are reported to have withdrawn job offers.

Thousands of engineering and business graduates could be left in the lurch as a consequence, according to industry watchers. An estimated three lakh business school students and 7.5 lakh engineering students graduate every year. Even in normal times an overwhelming percentage of these students (over 60 per cent, according to some estimates) are “unemployable” for various reasons. The rest get placed with various core sector companies or IT or ITES companies. The COVID-19 crisis, however, has dashed the hopes of this section, too.

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