Campus hires face six-month delay at Amazon India

While the company promised to address the “financial impact» on students, India’s leading engineering colleges are concerned about the delays by one of their top recruiters.

“In light of the challenging economic conditions, we’re delaying the start dates for some of our college hires by up to six months. We’re offering assistance to help address any financial impact. Amazon remains committed to university recruiting and developing the next generation of leaders and builders,» Amazon said in response to an emailed query.

Amazon laid off more than 27,000 employees globally since last year amid high interest rates and a growth slowdown. This has also impacted the likes of Meta, Google, Microsoft, and Accenture. The big tech and internet giants have together retrenched more than 70,000 job cuts since January amid fears a global recession will affect growth.

Amazon is one of the top recruiters from many Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and National Institutes of Technology (NITs). Placement teams at IITs said they are analyzing the impact of Amazon’s decision on students. Placements for IITs typically start in December.

“Students have come and told us that while they were told that their joining date was June, now it has been postponed. No date was given to them,» said the placement head at one of the NITs.

According to people aware, engineering colleges will now reach out to Amazon for more clarity on their plans. Campus recruitment may get tougher this year. India’s IT companies are likely to slash campus hirings by at least 40% amid robust bench strength, reduced client orders and poor visibility of when the recessionary phase will pass. IT firms are expected to hire about 155,000 students from the 2024 batch of engineering campuses compared to 230,000 from the batch of 2023.