After LinkedIn – a recruiting platform – started layoffs of its employees, the sacked staff are relying on the same platform for landing new jobs. Ironically, the fired workers are part of LinkedIn’s hiring team. LinkedIn falls under Microsoft’s larger layoff plan of slashing 10,000 jobs, which has affected employees in HoloLens, Surface, and Xbox.
Several ex-workers of the employment networking platform have now updated their profile pictures to indicate their active search for a new job with the ‘open to work’ tagline. Many also shared disappointing experiences of being handed the pink slip by LinkedIn.
Melanie Quandt, former senior manager of talent acquisition engineering, in a LinkedIn post said that she was unhappy with the ‘small benefits and severance’ package. Adding that she had never been fired in her 25 years of professional life, she said that it’ll be difficult to ‘trust an employer again’.
Highlighting her many achievements during her tenure at LinkedIn, she concluded the post by adding, “I am really proud of the impact I made. I lived the companies’ values every day. I was a poster child for transformation but yet … I guess it just wasn’t enough in the end. Can’t say I am not shocked or disenchanted.”
Emily Beiers, who worked as a technical recruiter at LinkedIn, took to the job search platform to share her news of being laid off and sought new opportunities in the same field.“My Technical Recruiter role was impacted due to a reduction in workforce…I am so grateful to everyone I have worked with,’ she wrote.
The layoffs have trickled down to LinkedIn’s Indian workforce too. Upali Sarkar from the global talent acquisition team shared a brief profile about herself and requested for referrals to new job openings. Upali, who was laid off after being part of LinkedIn for the past four years, said that she was looking forward to the ‘next chapter’.
Another impacted employee, Nicole Zawacki, who worked as ‘diversity, inclusion and belonging sourcing lead’, also used the platform as a springboard to look for new vacancies in the ‘talent acquisition or diversity’ team. She added that she’ll require some time to process the fact that she was fired.
Microsoft said last month it plans to cut 10,000 jobs, or about 5% of its workforce, over the course of this quarter in response to “macroeconomic conditions and changing customer priorities”.
