Last fall, a college junior I’ll call Caleb got an offer for a summer internship at a midsize tech company. It wasn’t his dream job, but in an uncertain market for computer science majors, it was better than nothing. So he took it. Then, hoping for something better, he kept applying for more internships.
This spring he got what he wanted: an internship that involved more interesting work, in a more established company, than the offer he had already accepted. But what to do with the first company, which was waiting for him in a few months?
Caleb drafted a short email to the company’s recruiter, thanking them for the opportunity but informing them that he wouldn’t follow through on their offer. Before sending it, he asked a friend to proofread it to make sure it sounded professional. “I didn’t want to be rude,” he tells me.
The reply was terse and angry. The recruiter chided him for wasting everyone’s time. He was told that a note about his betrayal would be included in his “record.” Oh, and could he let them know where he would be working instead? Caleb didn’t respond.
Breaking promises has long been a dirty secret at college career centers, which work with students to help them land jobs. Long lag times between fall hiring and summer start dates have always led to some shifts in attitude. But in recent years, students seem to be breaking their promises with increasing ease. According to Veris Insights, an analytics and research firm, students broke 6% of full-time job offers this year, nearly double the rate in 2021.
“I find this is more common over the last two or three cycles,” says Laura Garcia, director of undergraduate professional education at Georgia Tech. “We’re seeing more students change positions, accept offers, then back out and accept another offer. This has created some pretty difficult situations in terms of retaining certain employers.”
It’s easy to get angry at students who break their promises to employers, but here’s the thing: They know that plenty of companies are doing the exact same thing to students. They’ve heard about the rescinded offers from Amazon, Coinbase, and Meta that devastated college seniors over the past two years. Logistics startup Flexport revoked offers to new hires three days before they started. And viral TikTok videos have given students a front-row seat to the impersonal way tech companies have been firing employees. In a world where employers don’t keep their word to employees, students find nothing unethical about breaking their word in return.
“At-will employment works both ways,” Caleb says. “They should offer me a pension if they want my loyalty.”
Most defaults are simply due to bad timing: Companies typically require students to commit during the school year, before they’ve finished interviewing with all potential employers. But in some cases, students deliberately accept multiple offers and squirrel them away until just before their start date, just in case an employer defaults at the last minute. “They’re anxious that their jobs will go away,” says Chelsea Schein, senior director of college recruiting research at Veris Insights. “They’re hoarding the jobs because they’re afraid they won’t.” Defaulting isn’t selfishness. It’s a survival strategy.
As a result, Gen Z has a new attitude about going back on their word to employers, something that’s always been considered taboo. Some 44% of students surveyed by Handshake, a job site for college students, said accepting two offers is “reasonable,” up from 35% in 2022. And according to Veris Insights, just 6% now say they would never renege on an offer, down from 16% in 2019. “It’s pretty common,” says Caleb, whose friends also reneged on internship and full-time offers. “It happens all the time.”
The problem is that when students fail to meet their obligations, their universities pay the price. Major employers, who do not like to be left in the lurch, Track default rates by school and then use those rates to decide whether to continue hiring at those schools. If a senior reneges on an offer, a sophomore may end up having fewer employers to choose from. “Hold on your commitment,” Garcia implores Georgia Tech students, “so that other people don’t get punished.”
In the presentations she gives about job hunting, Garcia tells students to imagine it’s April of their senior year of high school and they get a call from the company that hired them. “Laura, you’re great,” the company tells them. “But I just met a student with a 4.0 who had two more internships than you. I think I’ll go with them. So I wish you the best.” Can you imagine how angry they would be? Garcia asks students. They must play by the rules if they want others to do the same. “I encourage students to stop thinking of corporations as just another entity,” she says.
Universities are trying to fight back against the new rule, but there’s not much they can do about it. Many MBA programs, which are small enough to monitor individual students, take a hardline approach: Wharton The school, for example, records the recruiting violation on the offender’s academic record and levies fines of up to $20,000. But the typical punishment for most college students is —denying non-compliers access to services like job fairs and university job listings—is little more than a slap on the wrist. In short, students are breaking their obligations because they can get away with it.
While employers are loathe to renege on their commitments, some privately acknowledge that they understand why so many students do so. “They’re just making a pragmatic decision for themselves, like an employer would,” says a college recruiter at a large manufacturing company. “That’s the reality. We both know now what game is being played.” If you were advising a young member of your family who accepted a job and then received a better offer from another employer, you’d probably advise them not to accept, he admits.
Still, Employers are doing everything they can to keep students from backing out. They stay in regular contact with new hires, looking for ways to keep them excited about the job. They put them in touch with a mentor before they start, to give the company a human face. They encourage students to advertise their new job on LinkedIn as soon as they accept the offer, to create some “social responsibility,” Schein says, and make it a little harder for them to change their minds. And if a student gets a better offer, companies sometimes sweeten the original deal, negotiating things like the job location and start date to keep the new employee from going elsewhere.
But contract defaults are so common that employers have begun to factor them into the hiring process. The hiring manager at a major manufacturer, for example, says his company hands out 10% to 15% more offers than it expects to hire, the same way airlines overbook their flights, assuming some passengers will cancel. Among large employers, the practice is widespread: According to Veris Insights, 59% of companies with large college hiring programs overhire, so they don’t end up empty-handed when students break their contracts.
For employers, though, not all defaults are equally bad. It’s annoying when students drop out early in the school year, leaving the company plenty of time to look for another candidate. It’s a real pain when students drop out in the spring, forcing recruiters to scramble for a replacement at the last minute. But it’s absolutely inexcusable when students don’t even bother to let the company know they’ve changed their mind, leaving HR departments baffled when their onboarding calls and emails go unanswered. “Sometimes they ignore you,” says the manufacturing recruiter. Schein even heard that one student had dropped out after receiving a signing bonus — and didn’t return the money. It’s not just whether you drop out, but how you do it that matters.
Schein, who also teaches undergraduates at Wharton, compares the career decisions her students face to their love lives. “When we commit to a romantic partner, we want to stick with it,” she says. “But if it’s not the right fit for you, you have an obligation to yourself and your growth. I’ve taught my own students not to default in a way that respects the process and the recruiters. Everyone feels better off because the student found the right home for them professionally.”
Caleb is currently enjoying a summer internship at the company he chose instead of the initial offer he accepted. When he finishes in the next few weeks, he’ll start applying for full-time positions by the time he graduates in 2025. His plan is to apply to 20 to 30 companies. He’s already researched them extensively—not only their salary data, but also their reputation as an employer and whether they’ve imposed any recent layoffs. He wants to land a position with job security, a competitive salary, good retirement benefits, and work assignments that will give him a good start to his career. If he accepts an offer and then receives a better one, he says he’s absolutely prepared to renege again.
“It’s my first job,” he says. “It determines a lot of my career path. It’s not something you can play around with.”
Aki Ito is Business Insider’s chief correspondent.
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