HR on the chopping block: “When I received a layoff email I was shocked"
HR on the chopping block: “When I received a layoff email I was shocked"
At the beginning of the year, high-tech companies had difficulty finding recruiters to locate the necessary talents for them to meet their growth goals. But in recent months, following the crisis, recruiters and HR personnel are the first to be laid off
Rotem (fictitious name) learned about the layoffs at Meta, where she worked in the recruitment department, from the media. She read that at 1:00 p.m. Israel time a personal email is expected to be sent to the company's employees informing them whether they are staying or being fired, and that was indeed the case. "I received an email with 'layoffs' in the subject in which it was written that I would probably be fired and not that I was being fired, in order to meet the legal requirement in Israel to hold a hearing. It was very technical and cold. There was no one to turn to in those first hours," she says.
She worked as a recruiter in the company and is a veteran in the field and industry. In the past, she held roles in recruitment, sourcing, and employer branding in high-tech and has been employed by large corporations since 2006. "I have never been fired. For 15 years I have not looked for a job as companies always came to me, for me this is a shock. This is also the type of company that does not fire recruiters, and if so, then only on the basis of performance, not as part of wide cuts. The small companies, the startups are the ones that are considered unsafe, so this is a real earthquake for me. It made me understand that maybe my next job won't be in a corporation," she says.
The cutbacks did not come as a complete surprise, as someone who worked in the recruitment department, she knew that there had been no recruitments for some time, but within the organization there were reassuring messages and she was sure that there was time and that even when there were cuts, they would be based on performance. She wasn't worried.
"As someone with a very strong work performance, who has worked in very good companies, this is the first time that I have been fired not because of performance but because of the company's irresponsible conduct regarding recruitment. I am considering perhaps turning to other areas in HR. If this were a situation where someone who is not good is fired, that is another story, but the insecurity and the fact that it happened now makes me wonder if the finger will not be light on the trigger in the future as well. This crisis is characterized by the layoffs of entire recruiting departments. It's a very bad feeling when you know that tomorrow morning you can go home, and it puts the whole issue of recruiting positions in Israel into question," she says.
If there are no recruitments then there is no need for recruiters, it makes sense that they would fire the recruitment department, no?
"I think there was a wrong planning of the entire workforce. There is a problem with looking at the profession. Today's recruitment teams are much more than recruitment, they are marketing, salespeople, they possess a lot of abilities and if recruitment stops, you should not fire but transfer to other places or keep a smaller staff and work by project. Many companies did not lay off or only a few were laid off, and in general if you want to keep an in-house team then you have to expand the position. What happened now is not something that should happen and the industry needs to correct itself. True, there are cutbacks and hiring freezes, but the recruitment market was slashed in a disproportionate way," she says.
In the last few weeks we talked to many recruiters and HR people who were fired and they all tell a similar story. The layoffs came as a surprise despite the hiring freeze. They, as those who sit within the human resources departments, did not think that the cuts would reach them. They all also asked to remain anonymous because they were thrown into a tough job market and they fear that publishing their story could harm them in their next job search.
This concern comes against the backdrop of the free fall in demand for high-tech recruiters. In the last year and a half or two, recruiters, especially in the high-tech industry, were considered the hottest commodity on the market. It was very difficult to find experienced workers and the need was very great as companies focused on growth. The recruiters worked very hard in order to find the best talents for the organization where they worked, to double, triple and even more the number of employees. As those responsible for attracting the best people to the organization, they told the story of the company in order to convince candidates to join. To do this, their connection to the company had to be significant and they had to believe in its success. Therefore, when the axe of dismissal was raised against them, it especially hurt. It was a hard fall from being on top of the world. Many of the dismissed recruiters testified that they experienced this as a crisis of confidence. They saw what the companies were spending money on, received reassuring messages from the management, and thought that the fact that they met the recruitment goals, reached senior positions, or gave their all to the organization, would protect them from layoffs.
Recruiting positions are mostly entry positions in the HR world. Recruiters usually start their professional career in placement companies and are usually people with a bachelor's degree in psychology or social sciences. Recruiters manage the entire process of bringing new employees to the company, starting with receiving the job description from the manager, through defining and advertising the job, building the recruitment process, screening resumes, telephone interviews and managing the entire process until the HR interview that ends the process in order to check that the candidate is also suitable to the company's DNA and values.
In Israel in recent months, over 700 employees in the fields of recruitment and HR have been laid off, a figure accurate as of November according to the employment service. Apparently this figure is lower than the real number of people actually fired since not everyone reported they were laid off. The situation across the world is not better. Job postings for recruiting jobs rose steadily in 2021 until reaching a three-year high in January 2022 – a more than 4-fold increase from January 2019, according to data from LinkedIn. But then, following the economic uncertainty, companies slowed down hiring and the number of open hiring positions dropped by 51% between January and September 2022.
The demand for recruiters was found to be decreasing in several countries, although the rate of decrease varies significantly from country to country. For example, job postings for recruiters have fallen 60% since January in the United States, but only 10% in India.
In Israel, the wave of layoffs in high-tech hit recruiters and human resources with all its force. "At the beginning of the pandemic period, recruiters were the first to be fired or sent out on unpaid leave. The rationale was very simple: if you freeze recruitment - you can fire the recruiters," says Viki Groner, a consultant and lecturer in the worlds of recruitment and employer branding at the HRD company, and director of Israel's recruitment and sourcing community with Yakov Rozen.
"Later, with the beginning of the economic recovery from the crisis, the rush for recruiters began. Recruiters became a strategic and critical resource. Organizations learned to understand that the success of business activity rests on quality human capital. The responsibility placed on the shoulders of the recruiters was enormous. Apart from the expectation for very high-quality work, the amount of recruitment forced the recruiters to work intensively with a very high stress factor. Organizations expanded the recruitment teams and invested many resources in building infrastructure. Sometimes, it was more difficult to staff a technological recruitment position than a position in the development worlds. During this period, we also saw an increase in the salary levels in recruiting and sourcing. Along with recruiting, extensive activity was also taking place in the fields of HR in general and in the world of employer branding in particular, in order to retain employees and attract employees from the outside."
The whirlwind that the world of work entered during the pandemic period did not improve the organizations' preparedness for the current crisis. Moreover, during the pandemic period and the transition to remote work, or hybrid work, the HR personnel became key personnel in the organization. The recruiters, following the growth that came after the crisis, became critical to the organization and many of them performed HR roles in addition to recruiting.
"After it seemed that organizations realized the strategic value of recruiters, they are once again among the first to be laid off. The reasons remain the same - efficiency, a decrease in recruitment volumes (or a freeze on recruitment), and budgetary considerations," added Groner. "Apparently recruitment does not generate income, although in practice recruitment has a tremendous impact on the company's profit line. In my opinion, a quality recruiter is the resource with the highest ROI in the organization."
Recruiters are the 'face of the organization' for candidates. They advertise the jobs, upload content to social networks and hold conversations with candidates in order to market the organization as one worth working for. The crisis of confidence following the current layoffs caused a change in the psychological contract between the organizations and those recruiters. "Employees have realized that organizations are not a home and they will not be able to provide the same stability that those organizations boasted of. For a recruiter who has gone through an entire journey with the organization, who has recruited employees, built entire teams and new activities, who is very connected to the company's values - this is an even more severe blow.”
Beyond that, the world of work which is now experiencing the crisis, or the correction, entered this period while still bearing the scars of the pandemic. So the crisis of confidence is even greater, but so is the expectation of a quick correction and recovery. Non-technological organizations continue to recruit and also in high-tech there are companies that are still recruiting. "We are witnessing an increased demand in the fields of information security, data, and also in the worlds of development. Organizations continue to work," Groner says.
While quite a few high-tech companies implemented major cutbacks in the recruitment departments, there are companies that chose not to eliminate entire departments and kept the role of recruitment broader in order to suit the different periods. "Our HR consists of a team that does both recruiting and HR, and when recruiting is not a top priority, the team is qualified to do other things as well," says Lilian Schor, human resources manager at Veev.
As a human resources manager, do you think that the decision of organizations that have frozen recruitment to fire the recruitment department is the right decision?
"In large organizations there is a team that is focused only on recruitment, so if they know that there is no recruitment expected in the coming year, it seems a correct decision to fire entire teams."
In her department, one employee who did both recruitment and HR was fired and she was one of the 20 company employees laid off in Israel.
"Today, I have two employees on my team who do both recruitment and HR, and currently we are focusing on HR. From our point of view, this is excellent because it allows breathing space and time to focus on projects that we always wanted to focus on, such as improving processes, onboarding, developing career paths, consolidation between departments and updating policies,” she says. "Projects in the HR world never end, even if the market doesn't recover, we really are not thinking about a scenario of cutting the entire department."
Despite all that is going on, there is also room for optimism. Hiring continues, also in high-tech and when the crisis is over, companies will need professionals again. "It is true that recruitment is the first area hit in times like this, but I think that a person who is professional and good at what they do will find their place. The HR person from my team who we had to say goodbye to, for example, has already found a job," noted Schor.
First published: 12:31, 18.12.22
