Gen Z strikes back

Last fall, a college junior I'll call Caleb received an offer for a summer internship with a midsize tech company. It wasn't his dream gig. But in an uncertain market for computer-engineering majors, it was better than nothing. So he accepted it. Then, hoping to land something better, he kept applying to more internships.

This spring, he got what he wanted: an internship that involved more interesting work, with a more established company, than the offer he had already accepted. But what to do about the first company, which was expecting 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 was reneging on their offer. Before hitting send, he had a friend look it over to make sure it sounded professional. "I didn't want to be rude," he tells me.

The response was terse — and angry. The recruiter admonished him for wasting everyone's time. A note about his betrayal, he was told, would be put on his "record." Oh, and could he please inform them of where he would be working instead? Caleb didn't respond.

Reneging has long been a dirty secret at university career centers, which work with students to help them land jobs. The long lag times between hiring in the fall and start dates in the summer have always led to some flip-flopping. But in recent years, students seem to be going back on their word with increasing ease. According to Veris Insights, an analytics and research firm, students reneged on 6% of full-time offers this year — nearly double the rate from 2021.

"I'm finding it to be more common over the past two or three cycles," says Laura Garcia, the director of undergraduate career education at Georgia Tech. "We see more students that are moving around — accepting offers, then reneging and going with another offer. It's created some pretty difficult situations in terms of retaining certain employers."

It's easy to get riled up at students who break their promises to employers. But here's the thing: They know many 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 They've heard about the rescinded offers from Amazon, Coinbase, and Meta that devastated college seniors the past two years. The logistics startup Flexport revoked offers to new hires three days before they were set to start. And viral TikTok videos have given students a front-row seat to the impersonal way tech companies have been laying off employees . In a world in which employers don't keep their word to employees, students find nothing unethical about breaking their word in return.

"At-will employment goes both ways," Caleb says. "They should offer me a pension if they want my loyalty ."

Most of the reneging is just the result of bad timing: Companies often require students to make commitments during the school year before they've finished interviewing with all prospective employers. But in some cases, students deliberately accept multiple offers and hoard them like a squirrel until right before their start date — just in case an employer reneges at the last minute. "They're anxious their jobs will disappear ," says Chelsea Schein, the senior director of university recruiting research at Veris Insights. "They're gathering the jobs because they're scared if they don't." Reneging isn't selfishness. It's a survival strategy.

As a result, Gen Zers have a new ethos about breaking their word to employers, which has always been considered taboo. Some 44% of students surveyed by Handshake, a job site for college students, said that accepting two offers is "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 also reneged on internships and full-time offers. "It happens all the time."

The problem is, when students renege, their universities pay the price. Leading employers, who don't like being jilted, track renege rates by school — and then use those rates to decide whether to continue recruiting at those schools. If a senior reneges on an offer, a sophomore may wind up having fewer employers to choose from. "Honor your commitment," Garcia pleads with students at Georgia Tech, "so other people don't get punished."

In the job-search presentations she gives, Garcia tells students to imagine it's April of their senior year, and they get a call from the company that has hired them. "Laura, you're great," the company tells them. "But I just met a 4.0 student that had two more internships than you. I think I'm going to go with them. So I wish you well." Can you imagine how furious you'd be, Garcia asks the students. You have to play by the rules if you want others to do the same. "I encourage students to stop thinking of corporations as just an entity," she says.

Universities are trying to fight the new norm, but there isn't much they can do about it. Many MBA programs, which are small enough to keep tabs on individual students, take a hard-line approach: The Wharton School, for example, notes the recruiting violation on a reneger's academic transcript and levies fines as high as $20,000. But the typical punishment for most undergraduates — denying renegers access to services like university career fairs and job listings — is little more than a slap on the wrist. Students renege, in short, because they can get away with it.

While employers hate reneging, some acknowledge privately that they understand why so many students are doing it. "They're just making a pragmatic decision for themselves, just like an employer would," says a university recruiter at a large manufacturer. "That's just kind of the reality. We both know now what game is being played." If he were advising a young family member who accepted a job and then got a better offer from another employer, he admits, he would probably advise them to renege.

Still, employers are doing everything they can to prevent students from reneging. They stay in regular touch with new hires, finding ways to keep them excited about the job. They connect them with a mentor before they start, to put a human face on the company. They encourage students to announce their new job on LinkedIn as soon as they accept the offer — to create some "social accountability," Schein says, and make it a little more awkward for them to change their minds. And if a student gets a better offer, companies sometimes sweeten the original deal, negotiating on things like the job's location and start date to keep the new hire from going elsewhere.

But reneging is now so widespread that employers have taken to baking it into the hiring process. The recruiter at the large manufacturer, for example, says his company hands out 10% to 15% more offers than it expects to onboard — the same way airlines overbook their flights, assuming some passengers will wind up canceling. Among big employers, the practice is widespread: According to Veris Insights, 59% of companies with large university recruiting programs now overhire, so they're not left empty-handed when students renege.

To employers, though, not all reneging is equally bad. It's annoying when students back out early in the school year, leaving the company plenty of time to look for another candidate. It's a real headache when students renege in the spring, forcing recruiters to scramble for a replacement at the late minute. But it's downright unpardonable when students don't even bother to inform the company they've changed their mind, leaving HR departments puzzled as their onboarding calls and emails go unanswered. "Sometimes you get ghosted," says the manufacturing recruiter. Schein even heard that a student had reneged after receiving a signing bonus — and didn't return the money. It's not just whether you renege — it's how you do it that matters.

Schein, who also teaches undergraduates at Wharton, likens the job decisions her students face to their love lives. "When we make a commitment to a romantic partner, you want to stick with them," she says. "But if it's not right for you, there's an obligation to yourself and your growth. I've mentored my own students on reneging in a way that respects the process and respects the recruiters. Everyone feels like they're better off, because the student found the right home for them professionally."

Caleb is currently enjoying the summer internship with the company he chose over the initial offer he accepted. When that wraps up in the next few weeks, he'll start applying to full-time roles for when he graduates in 2025. His plan is to apply to 20 to 30 companies. He's already researched them extensively — looking up not only their salary data but also their reputations as an employer and whether they've imposed any recent layoffs . He wants to land a role with job security, a competitive salary, good retirement benefits, and work assignments that will get his career off to a good start. If he accepts one offer, only to get a better one down the road, he says he's absolutely prepared to renege again.

"It's my first job," he says. "It determines so much of my career trajectory. It's not something you should play around with."

Aki Ito is a chief correspondent at Business Insider.