Show the balance sheet?

I guess this is the question we all must ask before getting into a company and finally accepting the job offer. As when you are sitting in the chair and answering various question this particular thing rarely cross your mind, one is worried about walking the gates of a giant company and see some numbers credited to the account on a regular basis with dignity of a job well done.

Recent Satyam crisis came up because the top management presented the inflated balance sheet to protect its standards and keep its place or move ahead of some other Indian IT majors. The worst is that the entire board either pretended or for real were clueless about all this and said that they were only shown the data which was published in the annual report audited by the accounting brains of Price water house coopers. How are they to be blamed? Than forget how much the employees would know and what is going through their mind is very difficult to decipher and no one has asked what will happen to the fresher’s who were placed in this company which is? (was) one of those companies’s where many people wanted to work at different positions.

When you are in college, and prepare for company placement, you never ever for once think that even if you get a job you will have to search for options and insure that you have more than one offer. Which is not at all possible simply because in college you need to give other a chance so that this whole concept of providing placement to most of students is maintained and then you relax once the company has made the offer? What happens next is very simple you give treat and enjoy the moment of being a part of the chosen few who made it in the end. Trust me I have seen my friends and I know for sure that they never for once think that the company whom they have trusted and laid their hopes on might delay or might even cancel the whole recruitment process. Simply because the whole process is very quick and you hardly have time to think or see it from other perspective. Neither when you sit on the chair and are grilled on technical/managerial/aptitude/general subject you think whether this company is worth trying for. How many projects this company has? How many people are sitting on the bench? What is the current market position of the company? Who are its clients? Are they heavily dependent on one country or one big project? Etc. Etc. It simply never crosses our mind because we believe the management and the HR executive who visit campus. More than anything one is so in secured about oneself that doubting the company is something that never occurs even in the wildest dream.

But, doing this is easier said than done because what one goes through at that moment is something which can be described by the person who has been there and seen that no one else knows the level of competiveness which exists. Once you are out of college with a job offer in hand you start dreaming and shopping to just add some colours to this whole dream. There are so many people who have said not to put all your eggs in one basket rather keep the options open. But this rarely happens.

The failure of Satyam has sprinkled doubt in every company be it in IT industry or non IT industry and this recent recession is also influencing things in every corner. Because today, many are not relying on campus placement some have chosen to try for alternative off-campus and in case they get a better deal outside they will switch. Which might result in lesser number of people choosing to join the company they were placed but than its cool at least they don’t have to wait and they have new deals in their hands.

Although for a company this might be little bad because even they have targets which need to be adhered and showcased in the major yellow papers. It might be the college who will have to bear some pain because the company’s might not choose to come if people from the college don’t join and as a result lesser number of students placed in next semester.

I just hope that the Satyam saga is one of its kind and there are not other company’s who are doing the same things under the covers. I hope when I am reading a financial news paper I am getting the correct information regarding the deals/amounts/projects etc and even the company’s official website are not lying and are giving accurate information rather than fictitious data.

The future is very hard to predict simply because you just don’t know what is happening at the
top level management and no one knows whether the transparency the corporate leaders talk about is only words or whether it has some meaning and credibility. This is not the case with Satyam, I am sure where Board of directors/ceo’s etc had no clues about this 7000 crore fraud which was going on since months. There might just be many companies where similar situation might exist. I am not saying a fraud would be there but what I am saying is that there might be people in the board within the company who are not aware about the decisions made by top notch executives or the deals that were signed or how many people are actually sitting on bench as it might not be their domain so why? Bother.

At this moment of time I actually don’t know whether Right to Information includes this aspect or not but I certainly know it should and we must have access to some information which directly or indirectly effects our lives. Be it as a Fresher for the company/employee or as an investor. So that one could easily use the power of information and technology in the best possible way and make correct choices.

And they should definitely show the bottom line accurately!
By,
Tulika Jyoti Vardhan