Indian IT firm Infosys has been accused of being “exploitative” after allegedly sending job offers to thousands of engineering graduates but still not onboarding any of them after as long as two years. The recent graduates have reportedly been told they must do repeated unpaid training in order to remain eligible to work at Infosys.
Last week, the Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES), an Indian advocacy group for IT workers, sent a letter [PDF], shared by The Register, to Mansukh Mandaviya, India’s minister of Labor and Employment. It requested that the Indian government intervene “to prevent exploitation of young IT graduates by Infosys.” The letter, signed by NITES president Harpreet Singh Saluja, claimed that NITES received “multiple” complaints from recent engineering graduates “who have been subjected to unprofessional and exploitative practices” from Infosys after being hired for system engineer and digital specialist engineer roles.
According to NITES, Infosys sent these people offer letters as early as April 22, 2022, after engaging in a college recruitment effort from 2022–2023, but never onboarded the graduates. NITES has previously said that “over 2,000 recruits” are affected.
Unpaid “pre-training”
NITES claims that the people who were sent job offers were asked to participate in an unpaid virtual “pre-training” that took place from July 1, 2024, until July 24, 2024. Infosys’ HR team reportedly told the recent graduates at that time that onboarding plans would be finalized by August 19 or September 2. But things didn’t go as anticipated, NITES’ letter claimed, leaving the would-be hires with “immense frustration, anxiety, and uncertainty.”
The letter reads:
Despite successfully completing the pre-training, the promised results were never communicated, leaving the graduates in limbo for over 20 days. To their shock, instead of receiving their joining dates, these graduates were informed that they needed to retake the pre-training exam offline, once again without any remuneration.
The Register reported today that recruits were told they would no longer be considered for onboarding if they didn’t attend these sessions, at least one of which is six weeks long, per The Register.
