"While Google has been in cost-cutting mode since last year, Alphabet reported a 7% increase in second-quarter revenue, which was better than analysts expected"
From what I've heard it's been incredibly difficult to get a new hire approved in some divisions for some years now, despite wide spread acknowledgement of being understaffed.
> “In order to continue our important work to ensure we operate efficiently, we’ve made the hard decision to reduce the size of our recruiting team."
I get the use of the sort of appeal-to-emotion word "hard" in this context, but if it's a necessary business decision then it's problem not a hard one. Just feels a bit disingenuous to me, as I don't think throwing that word will likely make anyone feel better.
Yeah, even if we assume the decision is coming from a complete sociopath, there's still, somewhere on the line, someone saying 'look, are you sure about this?'
Apologies; I wasn't very serious in my previous comment. I'm not sure how layoff algorithms work, but it is most likely polynomial. Firing people would be linear/sub-linear but candidate selection is probably a bit heavier.
Maybe a little extra overhead too for paying MBB to suggest Google's GRAD and SCI programs.
Wonder how likely is it that this is because of AI taking over the jobs. Sifting through resumes, contacting candidates, schedule some interviews, connect the hiring manager to the candidate, even getting some extra information from the candidate via email or phone calls are all things an LLM can efficiently do. They may actually do it even better than a regular human since they might "know" more about the role and the technical requirements than an average HR clerk...
While efficient, I’m not sure that removing the final human touch from what is otherwise a faceless, dehumanizing process is going to be great for candidates.
Google (and most other mid-large tech companies) leverage a ton of resume sorting, list building, auto-templatized outreach, etc.
Not sure the gap here is that large, but certainly recruiters have the tools to be WAY more efficient than they were in the past. Still their scaling is limited by ability to efficiently turn hiring manager requests and nuance into effective searches for tools to help build those lists.
Hiring is way less tight than it was a year ago. Even if Google had continued to hire at their previous pace, the number of positions each recruiter can hire likely increased.
With AI, you can do more with the same amount of resources. In terms of head-count I'm betting we saw the peak of the tech industry. I don't think this is just a "regular" recession. Much the same way manufacturing left the US, and came back transformed. I don't think tech comes back the same.
This is interesting. Afair the hr/recruiting org rolled up into the CFO . Must just be a coincidence that Ruth gets out of the CFO role (into chief investment officer) and then the hr layoffs start. What better way to build more of your creds/good will with wall st while not having the layoffs attributed to you as you are "no longer" the CFO?
"While Google has been in cost-cutting mode since last year, Alphabet reported a 7% increase in second-quarter revenue, which was better than analysts expected"