High-tech hires get paid disconnect fees.

• Position: Brief Article

Some high-tech companies have entered a new arena of competition: seeing which can yank back job offers to blue-chip college seniors with the least damage to their image.

Last fall, when it did much of its recruiting for the class of 2001, San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco Systems Inc., which makes data-networking systems, was coming off a fiscal year in which revenues jumped 56%. But a lousy start to 2001 -- sales dropped 4% in the first quarter -- led to 8,500 layoffs, including 392 at Cisco's campus in Research Triangle Park. Some students who had accepted job offers got the ax, too. Cisco's RTP campus turned away one each from N.C. State, Carolina and Duke. It took back 10 offers overall. And like Cisco employees, the new hires got some going-away presents -- money and help finding a new job -- even though they were months away from their first day of work. Cisco's RTP rival, Canadian communications giant Nortel Networks Corp., saw sales drop 2% in the first quarter after a 42% annual gain in 2000. It also withdrew job offers and handed out parting gifts.

At State, about 20 students lost offers from various companies, compared with eight at UNC and two at Wake Forest. Small numbers, given the thousands that graduated from each school. But at...