Hyderabad, April 18: K Shiva Prasad, 24, is reluctant to visit his home town Vakadu in Nellore district. A 2008 B.Tech. passout, Prasad had persuaded his father, a tailor, to borrow Rs 1.5 lakh for his course. Towards the end of his studies, in November 2007, he was offered a job by Satyam Computer Services Ltd., now Mahindra Satyam (MSat). He thought his family’s days of hardship had finally ended. But two years later, he’s still waiting to be called by the IT major to take up a job. In those two years, the company was rocked by the biggest corporate scam in the country and has passed to a new management. Without a salary, Shiva Prasad can’t repay the loan and is frustrated. His parents lead a hand-to-mouth existence.
Another Satyam hopeful, G Srikanth, 25, from Siddipet, is contemplating going back to his village to take up his father’s profession, agriculture. He worked as an assistant professor in an engineering college at Siddipet, which paid him Rs 8,000 per month, just enough to repay the EMI on his education loan from SBI. “After repaying that debt, I quit teaching. If I can’t pursue the career I aspired to, I’d rather help my parents on the farm,” he says.
Shiva Prasad and Srikanth were given offer letters by the pre-scam Satyam. They were cadets of Jawahar Knowledge Centre (JKC), the state government’s soft-skills training programme. They were to be invited to join the company’s payrolls after course completion in May 2008. But they are still unemployed, caught in a twilight zone, with the post-scam management of the company led by the Mahindras in no hurry to honour the pre-scam offer letters. They are called to interviews but eliminated in round one, for being neither freshers nor experienced.
According to the Satyam Freshers Union — a support group formed by these Satyam stateless citizens — over 6,000 from Andhra Pradesh were given offers between November 2007 and September 2008.
The erstwhile management of Satyam, led by Ramalinga Raju, was once a top recruiter and gave a much-needed fillip to the JKC programme.
However, that equation has now changed under the Mahindras’ management.
During 2009-10 Infosys replaced Satyam as the largest recruiter hiring 504, while MSat BPO took just 12. In contrast, the pre-scam Satyam hired 517 (and Infosys 277) the previous year.
The JKC has discussed the fate of these recruits with MSat but got no purchase. “We don’t have much leverage with them,’’ says JKC CEO Amarnath Reddy. “It’s not in our hands.” The JKC facilitated reassessment of these 11,000 by MSat in January 2010. Only about 15 per cent of them qualified for the next level, according to M Chandrasekhar, JKC director (academic affairs), told Express.
Mahindra Satyam is in the process of fresh hiring for its 4,000-seat IT SEZ in Gachibowli. While the company maintains that students with offer letters will be given first preference, the aspirants are apprehensive about the reassessment, which comes with an elimination component.
“Evaluation is not based on our B.Tech. percentage or our technical knowledge, but aptitude, verbal ability and reasoning,’’ says K Nagarjuna, convener of the Satyam Freshers Forum. “Why should we take another test, along with our juniors, when we already have an offer? Agreed they want to judge our aptitude after two years of hiring, but there’s no transparency.” These Satyam hopefuls have been in limbo for two years, some of them having rejected interview invitations assuming that they have place in Satyam. These two gap years are difficult to explain to potential recruiters.
Some of them have been desperate enough to offer to work for MSat for zero salary just to gain experience, but they weren’t entertained. “It’s humiliating. Competition is high and we’ve lost self-confidence. Thaletthuko polethunnamu,” says Sai Ram, who anticipates every call on his mobile could be from Satyam.
–Agencies