Ask HN: Hiring trend – companies “freezing hiring” post interview | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Hiring trend – companies “freezing hiring” post interview

Recently I've been interviewing with companies, and I've noticed that after the entire interview process is completed, they return saying they are putting hiring on hold temporarily and will pick it up next quarter. I observed this with 2 companies, hardly a trend, could've just been my bad luck. But just wanted to check if anyone else is also facing something similar while looking out for a job?

Are companies interviewing candidates for a potential role and keeping them on standby as a means to hire them at a later point quickly?

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Just a guess, but if companies are paying for recruiters[0] and HR software anyway[1], companies may as well keep jobs open, do market research on past compensation, give their engineers practice, and calibrate interview questions among many laid off engineers from top companies. Also, companies are required to collect diversity metrics for state laws or visa purposes, which may be helpful when the company decides to make an offer.

Any entity may list and accept job applications, schedule meetings, and ask candidates to write code. It may be a great way for leadership (tech/people/product) to run their product ideas past candidates and identify how to improve their interview process or product.

[0] Some recruiters may work for free (100% commission) for many companies at once, until a company extends an offer that is accepted.

[1] Software may also be "free" when the company already prepaid for an annual plan; or a license includes X interviews per month; or, the recruiter brings their own tooling, question banks, and services for screening candidates.

It is not OK to ask candidates to interview for a role you're not currently hiring for.

> Are companies interviewing candidates for a potential role and keeping them on standby as a means to hire them at a later point quickly?

Yep this is exactly what's happening. It takes time to source a candidate, schedule interviews, review feedback. If there's a chance that hiring will "unlock" soon companies will keep their pipeline full so they can insta-offer later.

I had this at a big name company and it totally soured me on them. Went through all the interview rounds and expected an offer, but instead was ghosted. No response via email or phone.

Another three letter company claimed to have a halt to hiring at the offer stage as well, but continued to leave the posting up for the next six months at least. This was in 2021 when things were hot.

When that happened to me and my buddy with Borland back in the 90's that ended up being a blessing. They never recovered from their problems and we were lucky to have dodged being in that mess.

Something similar happened with a couple of YC startups a while ago. It triggered some discussion inside YC about trying to prevent this from happening.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34096010

We should make this and ghosting by HR illegal. Seems like such a simple fix to a problem that brings out misery in people.

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