• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, September 13, 2023

Google has laid off hundreds of employees across its global recruiting team as hiring at the company slows.

Social media posts such as the ones on LinkedIn tell the story by those affected by the cuts. 

“Life is unexpected no matter how hard you try to plan for it and cement your stability,” Anne Appleton, recruiter at Google Cloud, wrote in a post on LinkedIn. “I've had a front row seat this year.”

Layoffs are not for under-performers, she wrote, explaining how many of her peers who do well are also now in the job market.

“Through all of the layoffs at Google and elsewhere, I had hoped that I would somehow, for some reason remain safe,” Pamela Bookbinder Clarke, an associated staff lead in recruitment at Google, wrote in a post on LinkedIn. “Sadly, that did not happen today.”

Alphabet, Google's parent company, announced earlier this year it would cut 12,000 jobs, affecting 6% of its full-time workforce of around 200,000.

“The volume of requests for our recruiters has gone down,” a Google spokesperson told Semafor, which first reported on the layoffs. “To continue our important work to ensure we operate efficiently, we’ve made the hard decision to reduce the size of our recruiting team.”

Impacted employees are being supported through a transition period, outplacement services, and severance as they look for new opportunities.

The cuts come as Google continues to deal with other challenges such as the antitrust legal battle with the Justice Department in a trial that began Tuesday.

The company declined to cite the percentage of its recruiting workforce impacted, Semafor reported, but said that it plans to retain a significant majority.