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Comment by ithkuil | Hacker News Reader

> hiring being frozen

I don't know when they made that decision but a recruiter contacted me from meta last week. I wonder how far do people go through the hiring pipeline before the "stop the engines" signal arrives. Hopefully not after the offer has been accepted.

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It may continue for another few weeks after „Stop engines“ signal is received, because recruiters still have their jobs and team leads will tell them: „Let’s keep recruiting funnel warm, while I’m checking if that signal really applies to us“. Until every team with an ambitious team lead is told that they are not special and they really should stop, they may still continue at least talking to people. And some may even got their budget after few rounds of negotiations, so this strategy will make a lot of sense for them.

... and what else should recruiters do? Sit there do nothing and fear being cut? Better be able to show what a pipeline you have.

Yeah, some recruiters are going to keep recruiting until they're fired. There's always a chance that somebody needs a warm funnel and then they'll be the ones kept around when the others are laid off.

Just a personal anecdote, I found Facebook's recruiters to be the absolute worst. The facts and figures of the position kept changing, and I spoke to three of them, and came away with zero confidence in their abilities.

It depends on organization, but in-house recruiters do not always have to interview people for specific positions. Employer branding, acquiring leads through meetups and conferences can also be part of the job.

exactly, in my experience, HR departments (at least recruiters) are among the first to be fired when things turn down - who needs to pay recruiters if you aren't hiring? - much better if you are worried about your own job to keep busy, and advertise and interview people for non-existent jobs then to sit on your hands all day with nothing to do. Hopefully the 'keeping busy' will save your job, if your manager needs to pick from a few dozen recruiters which ones to toss and which to keep.

Companies are always in the lookout for and hire great talent.

When they say hiring freeze, it usually means they will stop hiring a generic cookie-cutter person or fresh graduates

IC7+ was never frozen. Everything else is (at least for eng).

> Hopefully not after the offer has been accepted.

It has happened. Also happened that people were laid off soon after starting to work.

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