Google is cutting hundreds of jobs in its recruiting organization

Google is cutting hundreds of jobs in its global recruiting organization as part of a broader pullback in hiring over the next several quarters, CNBC has confirmed.

“We unfortunately need to make a significant reduction to the size of the recruiting organization,” Brian Ong, Google’s recruiting vice president, told employees in a Wednesday video meeting, a recording of which was obtained by CNBC.

“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,” Ong said. “Given the base of hiring that we’ve received the next several quarters, it’s the right thing to do overall.”

Employees involved in the recruiting group reductions will receive emails starting Wednesday, Ong said. 

In January, Alphabet-owned Google announced it was cutting 12,000 jobs, affecting roughly 6% of the full-time workforce. The layoffs occurred across the company, including in Google’s recruiting organization. While Google has been in cost-cutting mode since last year, Alphabet reported a 7% increase in second-quarter revenue, which was better than analysts expected.

Ong also said that employees hit in the latest layoffs will retain access to offices this week and online systems for longer. Employees had previously criticized the company for abruptly cutting off access to those who lost their jobs in January.

Courtenay Mencini, a Google spokesperson, confirmed the cuts in an email to CNBC.

“We continue to invest in top engineering and technical talent while also meaningfully slowing the pace of our overall hiring,” Mencini wrote. “In line with this, the volume of requests for our 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.”

Semafor was first to report on the announcement.

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