Here's How to Make Sense of the Job Offer Rescinds and Layoffs in Tech

Here's How to Make Sense of the Job Offer Rescinds and Layoffs in Tech

Once one of the fastest-growing industries, the technology industry is coming down to earth.

In June 2022, more than 100 tech companies have laid off almost 50,000 people combined, according to Layoffs.fyi and TrueUp, two crowdsourced lists tracking tech-industry layoffs.

Other employers, including Meta, Salesforce and Spotify, have slowed hiring by reducing the number of open positions or no longer filling roles after an employee resigns. Worst yet, Coinbase and other companies have even canceled on new hires with job offer rescinds.

Blind hosted a live-audio panel on Twitter Spaces on June 9, 2022, with human resources and recruiting experts to make sense of the current state of the job market. Here are the highlights from our speakers:

What is happening to the job market?

We had such a run; it was amazing… All of a sudden, when the economy reopened, we just [couldn’t] find enough people, so it’s a war for talent—a Great Resignation with… 11.4 million jobs open right now. But, we’re in a weird spot because we have high inflation. We may have stagflation… [or] be in [a] recession.

… I think we just got ahead of ourselves. I think with the Fed putting so much money into the economy: the stock market’s going, cryptocurrencies [are] booming, real estate boom. And now, it’s just kind of pulling back a little bit.

— Jack Kelly

What candidates should do in the current job market

If you’re a candidate… make yourself feel better about accepting an offer, and… say, “Hey, I’ve heard about companies rescinding offers. Can you add language to the offer letter that you all won’t do that?”

[They might not] add it, but maybe you can address the question with the uncertainty of the job market, [and ask]: What happens if you do rescind the offer? You might not get the answer… [but] in the back end, what’s happening is that recruiters… [will raise] these questions from candidates that [they’re] trying to close… and then the company [will] figure out… [how they are] going to address that.

— Ragini Holloway

The top thing candidates should do in the current job market

I think Blind is a great platform to check out to see if there’s anybody talking about the company.

  • What’s the culture? Is it toxic? Is it not?
  • What are their values as a company?

You have to do your research—not just look at the numbers that are on the offer letter.

… Figure out the right company and understand that if you decide to then give your notice to your current employer and then you go, that [the] offer does get rescinded, how are you going to handle that situation?

— Ragini Holloway

Job offer rescinds are rare

I’ve been in executive search for 25 years, and the only time I ever saw a company rescinding an offer is if they did a background check, and it turns out that the candidate really lied about something or did something horrible. This is kind of wild… particularly by a large company, like Coinbase, [which] is very surprising.

… Be mentally prepared… I think it’s important to manage expectations. Because if you go into a search thinking it’s going to be like it was six months ago, you [will] get very discouraged… It’s just the kind of what’s happening now.

— Jack Kelly

Layoffs might not be as commonplace as you would think

It seems like layoffs [are] happening all across [the job market], but I do think it’s of isolated to tech and [the] VC-backed startup industry…

Many of the other industries or companies are actually doing pretty fine and making competitive offers, so if you can get access to those kinds of companies, apply there. There’s a bigger chance of success than focusing just on tech and VC-backed startups.

— Kyum Kim

It seems that we got ahead of our skis. The downsizing, the layoff [and] the hiring freezes seem to be contained to the tech sector.

… It just seems that it was just too much money flowing too freely, and it can’t last that well. You can’t keep churning out… running a multi-billion-dollar unicorn with a lot of venture capital, but really no revenue, no profits.

… You don’t see this in other sectors, so I’m hoping what happens is this kind of plays itself out.

— Jack Kelly

Consulting could be an excellent career opportunity

A lot of my peers and a lot of people in the space have come to me and said, “Hey, have you ever done consulting work?”

… It’s interesting to see that this is coming back… and it’s such an attractive solution for folks.

… Think about new ways where [you] can use [your] expertise and skill set and expand on that and move in a different direction. You’re seeing a lot of folks in the Great Resignation movement doing that.

— Ragini Holloway

How to use Blind

Blind is a professional social network. We believe we are an information-sharing platform where people can go to discuss work with others in a shared context—people from your same company, your coworkers, people that work in the same industry as you, even folks that are [in] the same job function as you.

Our goal with Blind is to make the job market more efficient. If you think about the job market previously, there’s a lot of information asymmetry, right?

[Someone might ask]:

All of those questions can be answered on Blind. We really want to shift the power [and] empower candidates and professionals with transparency.

— Rick Chen

I would like to point out that Blind is not a platform that you try to control. It’s a platform that you try to respond to, and I think there’s this trend where you need to treat your employees like customers. You don’t try to control your customers. What you do is try to respond to their requests.

… The advice that I always give… executives… [is] that the discussions are going to be there, but depending on how you respond… you can actually create impact and impact the discussion to skew in a more positive way. But, if you try to control it, people are going to just come back to Blind and talk… about the problem.

— Kyum Kim

My thought was [Blind] is where people come anonymously to complain, which in hindsight, it’s actually not the right way to think about it because more recently when you think about the pandemic, and people looking for outlets to talk about their burnout, or talk about pay equity or job changes, or offers or all the things that we’re seeing right now, there’s a platform for people to compare notes… and I think that’s very powerful, whether you’re an employee or a candidate.

— Ragini Holloway

People assume that Blind is just folks that are professionals [and] that executives or HR teams don’t engage.… We’re also seeing some cheeky HR folks and recruiters that are going on Blind and saying, hey, our company is doing quite well… We’re growing. We have no hiring freeze. We won’t rescind any job offers. Are you interested?

— Rick Chen