When Layoffs Happen at Tech Companies, This Position Is the First to Go

Companies couldn’t hire enough recruiters to help fill all of the open technology positions they had a year ago. Now many tech-talent seekers are job-hunting themselves.

Few other professionals have felt the whiplash more as big tech’s long-running hiring boom fizzles out. It is a sharp reversal for a field in which even inexperienced tech recruiters could earn low six figures. At Meta Platforms Inc., CEO Mark Zuckerberg warned that recruiting staff would be disproportionately hit in the 11,000 layoffs it announced this month—the result, he said, of too much hiring and spending during the pandemic.