Last fall, a freshman 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 engineering graduates, it was better than nothing. So he accepted. Then, hoping to land something better, he continued to apply for other internships.
This spring, he got what he wanted: an internship that involved more interesting work, at 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 him for the opportunity but informing him that he was withdrawing from the offer. Before hitting send, he asked a friend to proofread it to make sure it sounded professional. “I didn’t want to be rude,” he told me.
The answer was short and angry. The recruiter chastised him for wasting everyone’s time. He was told that a note about his betrayal would be put on his “file.” Oh, and could he inform them where he would be working instead? Caleb didn’t answer.
Going back on your word has long been a well-kept secret at college career centers, which work with students to help them land jobs. Long lags between fall hiring and summer start dates have historically led to change of heart. But in recent years, students seem to be increasingly going back on their word. Students reneged on 6% of full-time job offers this year, nearly double the rate in 2021, according to Veris Insights, a research and analytics firm.
“I’ve seen this phenomenon become more prevalent over the last couple of cycles,” says Laura Garcia, director of undergraduate professional education at Georgia Tech. “We’re seeing more and more students changing jobs, accepting offers, and then changing their minds and accepting another offer. It’s created some pretty difficult situations for some employers to keep.”
It’s easy to get upset at students who don’t keep their promises to employers. But they know that many companies do the same thing to students. They’ve heard about the rescinded offers from Amazon, Coinbase, and Meta that have devastated college seniors over the past two years. Logistics startup Flexport revoked offers to new hires three days before they were due to start. And viral TikTok videos have given students a front-row seat to the impersonal ways tech companies fire their employees. In a world where employers don’t keep their word to their employees, students don’t find it immoral to break their word in return.
“At-will employment is mutual,” Caleb explains. “They should offer me a pension if they want my loyalty.”
Most rejections are simply the result of bad timing: Companies often ask students to make commitments during the school year before they’ve finished interviewing with all the potential employers. But in some cases, students deliberately accept multiple offers and hoard them like squirrels until the start date, just in case an employer backs out at the last minute. “They’re afraid their job will disappear,” says Chelsea Schein, senior director of college recruiting research at Veris Insights. “They’re hoarding jobs because they’re afraid they won’t.” Rejection isn’t selfishness. It’s a survival strategy.
As a result, Gen Z has adopted a new ethic about breaking their word to employers, which has traditionally been considered taboo. About 44% of students surveyed by Handshake, a job site for college students, said accepting two offers was “reasonable,” up from 35% in 2022. And according to Veris Insights, only 6% now say they would never renege on an offer, down from 16% in 2019. “It’s pretty common,” says Caleb, whose friends have also reneged on internship and full-time job offers. “It happens all the time.”
The problem is that when students fail to deliver, their universities pay the price. Large employers, who don’t like to be abandoned, Track rejection rates by school, then use those rates to decide whether to continue recruiting at those schools. If a senior turns down an offer, a sophomore may find himself with fewer employers to choose from. “Stay true to your commitment,” Garcia pleads to Georgia Tech students, “so other people don’t get punished.”
In her presentations on job searching, Garcia asks students to imagine it’s April of their senior year and they get a call from the company that hired them. “Laura, you’re great,” the company tells them. “But I just met a 4.0 student who’s had two more internships than you. I think I’m going to go with him. So good luck.” Can you imagine how furious you’d be, Garcia asks students. You have to play by the rules if you want others to do the same. “I encourage students to stop thinking of companies as just one entity,” she says.
Universities are trying to combat this new normal, but there is little they can do about it. Many MBA programs, which are small enough to monitor students individually, take a hard line: The Wharton School, for example, notes the violation of recruiting rules on the draft dodger’s transcript and imposes fines of up to $20,000. But the typical penalty for most undergraduates — denying dodgers access to services like job fairs and university job listings — is nothing more than a slap on the wrist. Dodgers, in short, because they can get away with it.
Although employers are loathe to renege on their commitment, some privately acknowledge that they understand why so many students do it. “They’re just making a pragmatic decision, like an employer would,” says a college recruiter for a major manufacturer. “That’s the reality. We both know what we’re playing at.” If he were to advise a young family member who took a job and then got a better offer from another employer, he admits, he’d probably advise them to reconsider.
Always, Employers do everything they can to keep students from backing out. They stay in regular contact with new hires, finding ways to get them interested in the position. They connect them 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 accountability,” Schein says, and to make it a little harder for them to change their minds. And if a student gets a better offer, companies sometimes sweeten the initial deal, negotiating on things like the location and start date to keep the new hire from going elsewhere.
But not accepting contracts is now so common that employers have taken to building it into the hiring process. A recruiter for a major manufacturer, for example, says his company hands out 10 to 15 percent more offers than it expects to accept—much like airlines overbook their flights, assuming some passengers will eventually cancel. Among large employers, the practice is widespread: According to Veris Insights, 59 percent of companies with recruiting programs for major universities are now overhiring, so they won’t be left empty-handed when students don’t back out.
For employers, however, not all lapses are so serious. It’s annoying when students drop out early in the school year, giving the company plenty of time to find another candidate. It’s a real headache when students drop out in the spring, leaving recruiters scrambling to find a replacement at the last minute. But it’s downright unforgivable when students don’t even bother to let the company know they’ve changed their minds, leaving HR departments scratching their heads as their onboarding calls and emails go unanswered. “Sometimes you get ghosted,” says the manufacturing recruiter. Schein has even heard of a student who backed out after receiving a signing bonus—and didn’t return the money. It’s not just whether you drop out, it’s how you do it that matters.
Schein, who also teaches undergraduates at Wharton, compares her students’ career decisions to their romantic lives. “When we commit to a romantic partner, we want to stay with them,” she says. “But if it’s not a good fit, you have an obligation to yourself and your growth. I’ve taught my own students how to reverse their decision in a way that respects the process and the recruiters. Everyone feels better off because they’ve found the right professional home for them.”
Caleb is currently enjoying his summer internship at the company he chose over the initial offer he accepted. Once that internship ends in the next few weeks, he’ll start applying for full-time positions when he graduates in 2025. His plan is to apply to 20 to 30 companies. He’s already done extensive research on them, checking not only their salary data, but also their reputation as an employer and whether they’ve recently had any layoffs. He wants a position that offers job security, a competitive salary, good retirement benefits, and a role that will give him a solid start to his career. If he accepts an offer, only to receive a better one later, he says he’s absolutely willing to reconsider.
“This is my first job,” he says. “It determines so much of the trajectory of my career. It’s not something to mess around with.”
It’s me is a chief correspondent at Business Insider.