Thursday, November 4, 2010

Engineer supposed to join does not turn up without information

Last month, after around 4 weeks of interviewing we zeroed down on an engineer and gave him an offer letter. He came and accepted it and also accepted the terms and conditons which included a 12 month compulsory stay with the organization. He talked, discussed, shared email ids. He responded with all needed documents to HR but during the 30 days between the offer letter and joining date kept us in the dark as to his intentions.

A day prior to his joining all email-Ids, domain login, machine was setup and this fellow did not turn up. Today after 10 weeks we still do not have engineer on board. This is hugely disappointing. I wish he had been professional enough to have informed us and so that we could have searched for a new candidate.

I have no ideas, how to avoid such situations and I do not want to lift the 12 month compulsory stay terms & conditions as I believe that we as an organization invest enough in an individual that he should commit to this minimal time frame. We do not hide any details as to what we do, what platforms we work on, type of work etc.

My thoughts are weening towards hiring Interns --- at least they assure me of 6 months availability and then give offers to the top ones at the end. By that time the intern has seen the working of the organization and can take a quick decision to join or not. Given the resources that I see during the interviews, I think this is also a good way to give back to the society at large – an engineer who is ready for the Industry. I will blog about the experience later ...


2 comments:

  1. @Kulbhushan, yeah working with interns over six months period and finally freezing hires amongst them has worked the best for us in terms of:

    1. Engineer knows what to expect from the company in terms of growth, his profile etc.
    2. Company is assured a six months tenure from the engineer during which he can be trained and be made ready for final live jobs in near future when he is made the actual offer.

    Ishwinder Singh,
    Enbake Consulting

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  2. Hiring interns seems like stop-gap arrangement. Beyond a point we all also require experienced people. I hope NASSCOM sets up a system on top of GOI Aadhaar project. That way the employment/interview history could be carried forward. More like credit history of a person. At least people would get discouraged from searching a job even after accepting a job offer.

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