Google is laying off hundreds of employees on its recruiting team starting this week, Semafor first reported.
Brian Ong, Google’s vice president of recruiting, communicated the decision in a video conference held on Wednesday (and recorded by CNBC), stating that although the decision was hard, it is “the right thing to do overall” for the company.
“We unfortunately need to make a significant reduction to the size of the recruiting organization,” Org said on the call to employees. “It’s not something that was an easy decision to make, and it definitely isn’t a conversation any of us wanted to have again this year.”
The recruiting department will be hit the hardest, and impacted employees will receive notification emails, Ong added. The exact number of employees losing their jobs is currently unknown.
Courtenay Mencini, a spokesperson for Google, told CNBC in an email that the overall demand for recruiters “has gone down.”
“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,” she told the outlet.
Tech Layoffs Are Still Ongoing
The recent Google layoffs in the recruiting department are part of the ongoing workforce reduction taking hold at major tech companies.
In January, Google announced a workforce reduction of 12,000 positions, impacting approximately 6% of its full-time employees. The tech giant is just one of several that have been actively cutting down staff over the past year, following a pandemic-fueled hiring frenzy.
Also in January, Amazon announced it would be laying off about 18,000 employees, and in May, another 9,000 — bringing the total 2023 cut-back to 27,000.
Meta, whose CEO Mark Zuckerberg kicked off 2023 by calling it the company’s “year of efficiency,” laid off over 10,000 employees in the first half of the year.
Related: Google and Meta Execs Rake in Big Bonuses Despite Industry-Wide Layoffs
Madeline Garfinkle
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