(Image via indiatoday.com)
Carnegie Mellon isn’t the only institution that made a boo-boo by accidentally sending admission letters to 800 candidates across the world only to retract the letters hours later. Indian IT major Infosys too mistakenly sent offer letters to over 500 applicants across the country owing to a bulk e-mailing mess-up. Unlike Carnegie Mellon, however, Infosys simply went ahead and admitted them.
“Big deal, man,” shrugged HR Manager, P Ekambaram. “What’s 500 applicants? Just a little more space on the fleet of trucks we take to campuses to haul graduates in. We’ll just put the extra ones on the bench along like the others.”
Ranjith Gowda, another HR Manager from Infosys, adds, “Actually this sort of thing happens more often than you think. It’s only made news this year because of the Carnegie Mellon incident. In fact, a few years back we used to routinely send offer letters to the entire university’s population, sometimes even the third years, because the recruitment team was too bored to go through the individual assessments.”
Applicants to Infosys, however, aren’t complaining, saved as they were, from the heartache experienced by Carnegie Mellon applicants who celebrated their admission by resigning from their companies and telling all their loved ones, only to receive regret letters later on.
“Well to be honest, I hadn’t told many about the Infy offer. The only person I did tell was my Dad, who rewarded me with a frown. After that I didn’t feel like telling anyone else. So it’s not like I’d have been shattered had they withdrawn the offer,” said Palaniappan, a Metallurgy engineer turned Infoscion.
Also happy are the 600 plus employees warming the benches in Infosys. “Can’t wait for the new arrivals,” exulted Infoscion Anand Walunjkar. “We will now be the senior benchers!” Anand has already created a Facebook group titled “Bench of 2015”, added the 500 new joinees and sent friend requests to all the girls in the group.
Meanwhile, TCS too goofed-up, but in a slightly different manner, when it mistakenly fired, through bulk emails, 300 more employees than they meant to. Hours later, the e-pinkslips were withdrawn (and in some cases deferred), much to the relief of these employees.
(With inputs from Ajayendar Reddy)