Wipro jobs: Freshers cry foul over ‘never ending’ tests for onboarding at the IT firm

This is a story about 600 techies who graduated from top universities in 2021. By January 2022, they landed offer letters from one of the top IT companies, Wipro, with a package of Rs 3.5 lakh per annum. But as per the Pune-based labour union Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate (NITES), these students have still not been able to join the company even after almost 1.5 years. These students are not technically freshers anymore and don't have any work experience to show either.

NITES said that in April 2022, the company gave the freshers an option to undergo a 4-5-month Velocity training program to upgrade their package to Rs 6.5 lakh. “In March 2022, before starting the unpaid Velocity training, Wipro HR department assured them that if they successfully completed the training, they would not have to undergo more training,” NITES President Harpreet Singh Saluja told CNBC-TV18.

Roles at Wipro are referred to as ELITE or TURBO. ELITE offers Rs 3.6 lakh per year, while TURBO offers Rs 5.5+1 lakh per year. In Wipro, one can increase their package by going through Velocity training. New hires in general go through Project Readiness Program (PRP) before joining to equip them with the "necessary knowledge and skills to start working on customer projects."

Those who passed the Velocity program got an upgraded package offer letter, according to NITES, but this was later rescinded as reported by CNBC-TV18. Wipro then said: "Like others in our industry, we continue to assess global economies and customer needs, which factor into our hiring plans." The last date for accepting the new offer was February 20, 2023.

According to Saluja from NITES, many of these 'freshers' accepted the new offer letter to be onboarded on March 14, 2023, with a joining date of March 30, 2023. "While giving the Velocity option, Wipro said there would be no more training. However, after March 30, 2023, joining, Wipro suddenly changed its stance and said that the employees have to go through PRP, too,” said Saluja.

According to NITES, Wipro has now told the candidates that if they failed the PRP training with an overall score of less than 60 percent, their jobs would be terminated immediately.

CNBC-TV18 has written to Wipro and the story will be updated.

An employee working at the HR department at Wipro told CNBC-TV18 on condition of anonymity that delays in onboarding are "normal" at Wipro. "The company gave offer letters to many freshers when the business was doing well. Now, due to global uncertainty, the business has seen some decline and we don't know which business role to keep the freshers in," said the HR employee.

Last year, CNBC-TV18 reported that nearly 2,000 freshers have been waiting for more than a year to get onboarded by the tech giant.

CNBC-TV18 reached out to Wipro and the company said "At Wipro we place immense value on seeing our talent grow and succeed. The Project Readiness Program is a part of our routine onboarding process and is designed to ensure that our next gen associates are assigned to the right client projects and have the most up-to-date skillset to make an immediate impact."

A fresher told CNBC-TV18 that this is just one of the many tactics being used by Wipro to finally terminate offer letters. "Since it won't be okay to just cancel the offer letters they are finding new strategies and saying that the candidates failed the tests, or didn't meet our standards," the fresher said.

The HR employee told CNBC-TV18 that hardly any offer letters are terminated after PRP as the test is fairly basic and easy. Interestingly, this year Wipro has terminated the employment of many freshers for "performing poorly on this assessment repeatedly even after training”.

In January, Wipro axed 452 freshers it made offers to but had not onboarded. The rejected students with offer letters from January 2022 argued that a whole year was wasted because of this abrupt exercise.

“This systematic and comprehensive performance evaluation process triggers a series of actions such as mentoring and retraining and in some cases separation of certain employees,” Wipro had said at the time.