Your joining date got delayed: what to do in the waiting months, and how to come out ahead

Short answer: the offer is probably real, and it is probably going to be later than anyone has told you. Companies have, on record, honoured delayed offers after eight months, a year and even more than two years. None of them will promise you a date. So the wait is not a question of patience. It is a question of what you do with the months, and the people who come out ahead are the ones who treat them as training time rather than waiting time.

What is actually happening

If you are holding an offer letter or a letter of intent with no joining date, you are in a large group, and it is not about you.

• Tech Mahindra. In March 2026, more than 1,000 engineering graduates from the 2025 batch were still waiting for formal offer letters, close to a year after being selected. The company said it releases offer letters in stages based on business demand and remains committed to its campus commitments.
• Wipro. More than 200 candidates selected under its Elite Hiring 2025 programme received offer letters in July 2025 and letters of intent in August 2025. In August 2026 they were still waiting, and the employees' body NITES wrote to the company asking for a status update, the reasons, confirmation that the letters were still valid, and a time-bound schedule. An earlier group of more than 250, with letters from around May 2025, had already been taken to the labour ministry in January.
• TCS. In July 2025, NITES complained on behalf of more than 600 lateral hires who had resigned from their previous employers, reported on their joining dates, and were told of an indefinite delay. TCS replied that it is committed to honouring every offer it has made and that everyone with an offer will be onboarded, with joining dates set by business demand.
• Infosys, the long one. About 2,000 graduates from the 2022 batch waited more than two years. In August 2024 the chief executive said that some dates had changed but everyone would join, and the batch was given a joining date of 7 October 2024.

The mechanism is the same everywhere. Campus offers are made against forecast client demand, sometimes a year ahead. When the demand arrives late, the joining dates move with it. TCS's chief executive said in April 2026 that a fresher needs about nine months of training before deployment, so a company that is not sure of next year's projects has every incentive to hold the batch until it is. That is a business decision about forecasts. It is not a verdict on you.

Two things follow. First, the offers do tend to be honoured, eventually, because the companies say so publicly and have done so before. Second, "eventually" has meant a year or more for thousands of people, and no one in HR can tell you which it will be for you.

Know which paper you are holding

Before you plan the months, read the document. Three different things get called "the offer" in conversation.

• A letter of intent says the company intends to hire you. It usually carries conditions and no date.
• An offer letter names the role, the pay and the terms, and asks you to accept. It may name a tentative joining date or say that one will follow.
• An appointment letter comes at or after joining and is the employment contract.

Read your own letter for three things: what it says about the joining date, what it says about the company's right to withdraw or to change terms, and what it asks of you in the meantime, such as keeping your contact details current or completing a pre-joining course. We are trainers, not lawyers. If the letter matters to you financially, a lawyer, or a body such as NITES which has filed these complaints, is the right reader for it. What we can tell you is what the letter is not: it is not an income, and it is not a reason to stop moving.

Write, do not wait

Keep one thread of written communication with the recruiter or the campus-hiring mailbox, and keep it short and polite.

• Once every four to six weeks, a three-line email: who you are, your candidate ID and batch, and a request for the current status and any tentative timeline.
• Confirm in the same email that your contact details are unchanged and that you remain interested.
• Keep every reply, including the automated ones, in one folder.

Do not post angry messages on LinkedIn, and do not phone the recruiter weekly. The written record is what helps you, and whoever is on the other end of the mailbox did not make the decision.

Three rules for the waiting months

1. Do not resign from a job you already have. The TCS case above is the whole argument. A delayed offer is a plan, not a salary.

2. Take any job you are offered, and say so if asked. Income, routine and a short gap on the résumé all matter, and taking another role does not void the first offer. Most companies ask only that you inform them. If the first company calls, you decide then, with a job in hand instead of none.

3. Do not borrow against the offer. No loan, no course fee you cannot carry, no purchase planned around a salary that has no start date.

The plan for the months you have

This is the six-month plan from our freshers article, with one change: you have a known destination, so you can aim at it.

Month 1: find out what the company will test or train. Every large recruiter runs an induction with assessments, and the tiered fresher tracks test fundamentals before the better-paid grades. Read the pre-joining material in your letter, and the job postings for the role you were offered. That list is your syllabus.

Months 1 to 2: fundamentals you can be tested on. Linux, networking, SQL and one scripting language. If your degree did not make you practise these, the IT Foundation Program exists for exactly that.

Months 3 to 5: one specialisation, with proof. Cloud, databases, data or AI, chosen on the roadmap and aimed at the role you hold an offer for. Build things an interviewer, or an induction trainer, can open: deployments in a free-tier account, a schema you designed and tuned, a dataset you cleaned and analysed. The market outside the offer rewards the same thing: TeamLease Digital reported in September 2026 a 55 to 60 percent shortfall of qualified people in cloud and about 53 percent in generative AI, and Xpheno counted 117,000 active technology openings the same month, most of them for people who already have a skill.

Month 6 and onwards: interviews, in both directions. Mock interviews until the answers come without rehearsal, a résumé that leads with the projects, and weekly applications to other employers. You are not being disloyal. You are being employed.

Throughout: keep the thread alive with the once-a-month email, and keep a one-page log of what you learnt and built each month. When the call comes, that page is your answer to "what have you been doing?"

When the call comes

Companies that resume onboarding do it in batches and at short notice: Infosys's 2022 batch learnt its 7 October 2024 joining date about five weeks beforehand. Keep your documents ready, keep your phone number and email unchanged, and expect an assessment or a refresher before deployment. The people who arrive with the fundamentals fresh and a project to talk about are the ones the induction trainers remember, and they are the ones who get the better grade when the batch is sorted.

If it never comes

Some offers are withdrawn, and some simply go quiet. If you have used the months as above, you are not back at the start. You have a specialisation, proof of it, and a habit of applying. That is the position from which our students get placed, with or without a campus offer behind them.

Arindam had no offer and no IT background, lost his job in the middle of it, and received an offer from a Tata Group company a few months after he started training. Deepa Dhiman held a B.Tech in IT from 2016 and spent years in front-desk jobs before she restarted and was placed as a senior Oracle DBA. Ananya Verma had the rejections before the training:

"I completed my graduation in BBA in 2023 and initially pursued freelancing. I also took several courses, but they did not yield the desired results, and I faced repeated rejections. Eventually, I came to know about SHA. With their industrial training and expert guidance, I was able to successfully crack an interview with an MNC and secured a position as an Oracle Database Administrator." — Ananya Verma, via Google

And Souvik Ghosh, in the video below, waited five years with a computer science degree before a structured plan and mock interviews got him a software engineer role within months.

How we help

The first step is a free counselling call, where we look at the offer you hold, the role it names and the months you have, and map the fundamentals and the specialisation that fit it. Batches run for both freshers and working people, with evening and weekend options. There are two ways to join, and the current starting fees are in the Fees section of the Courses page. Placement assistance continues until you are hired, as long as you stay engaged: attend the sessions, finish the projects and appear for the interviews we arrange. If the first company calls before that, you go with our blessing and a better grade.

Ask for the call here, or book a slot yourself. If the waiting has already become a gap on paper, returning to IT after a career gap shows how to present it.

Sources

• People Matters, 13 March 2026: more than 1,000 engineering graduates from the 2025 batch awaiting formal offer letters from Tech Mahindra close to a year after selection; the company's statement on releasing offer letters in stages based on business demand.
• People Matters, 13 August 2026: more than 200 candidates from Wipro's Elite Hiring 2025 programme, offer letters issued in July 2025 and letters of intent in August 2025, still waiting; NITES's demands for a status update, reasons, confirmation of validity and a time-bound schedule.
• Outlook Business, 19 January 2026: more than 250 Wipro selects with letters of intent from around May 2025 not yet onboarded; NITES asks the labour ministry to intervene.
• Outlook Business, 23 July 2025: NITES complaint on behalf of more than 600 TCS lateral hires who resigned from previous employers and were told of an indefinite delay; TCS: "committed to honour all offers we have made" and "Everyone who has received an offer from TCS, will be onboarded", with joining dates set by business demand.
• Outlook Business, 27 August 2024: about 2,000 Infosys recruits from the 2022 batch waiting more than two years; chief executive Salil Parekh: "We changed some dates but beyond that everyone will join Infosys and there is no change in that approach."
• Outlook Business (PTI), 3 September 2024: Infosys's 2022-batch recruits given a joining date of 7 October 2024.
• Business Today, 13 April 2026: TCS chief executive K Krithivasan on 25,000 fresher offers for FY27 and about nine months of training before deployment.
• TeamLease Digital, as reported by IANS on 29 September 2026: talent gaps of 55 to 60 percent in cloud and about 53 percent in generative AI.
• Xpheno, Active Tech Jobs Outlook for September 2026, as reported by People Matters: 117,000 active technology openings; mid-senior and senior roles nearly 60 percent of demand.

Souvik Ghosh: B.Tech in Computer Science, no job for five years, then a software engineer role within months

Waiting with a degree and no start date is not new. Souvik waited five years. Hear what changed once he trained with a structured plan and mock interviews.

Frequently asked questions