Global IT giant:  New Employees Join On Auspicious Days

By Iqbal Ansari

A Telugu boy from north India goes through a written test and a couple of interview rounds with the IT major, all speedily within a couple of days around the first week of July. He sails through and the company requires him to join their Chennai office at the earliest. The HR sends the information sheet online and tells him verbally to expect the joining date on 22 nd July.

He's told that the need is very urgent and the offer letter will arrive anytime. So, the boy is all set to join, but there's no avail of the offer letter for the next 20 days.

Each day becomes killing in anticipation. Unable to bear it he calls the local office HR. They assure him that's all fine and everything is in the pipeline but that the letter is yet to land from the India main office in Bangalore.

Finally the letter comes. While the boy expects himself to join in a day or two, he finds the joining date pushed to the fourth week of August, that too on a Friday. Normally, corporates like to begin employee contracts on a Monday, and not on the last day of the week. The letter was signed by a south Indian person in the HR. The boy was perplexed thinking about the urgency the company showed in the recruitment process, and wondered how the rush fizzled out.

A friend of his who works in the Bangalore office of the same company helped crack the mystery. He said that though we've moved with super computers, superstition still stalks many companies in the south like Bangalore and Chennai. And even blue-chip global MNCs are not immune to that.

The month of Aadi (mid-July to mid-August) is considered inauspicious in large parts of south India. In fact, the friend told him, companies ask employees to choose an auspicious date and join. The friend's cousin who works with American Express in Chennai was asked to consult his family and priest, and then let the company know the 'auspicious' date of joining keeping in mind the 'Rahus & Ketus' and other planetary positions in his horoscope.

One is not used to these things in northern India metros. So, nothing else explained why the MNC pushed the joining date from 'Aadi' to 'Aavani' and to a Friday. Knowing this boy to be of south Indian origin, the IT giant itself might taken up the task of keeping the 'planets' in his horoscope in good humour.