JANUARY 15, 2009 Google Plans 100 Layoffs of Recruiters
By JESSICA E. VASCELLARO Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123197784922483617.html Google Inc. said it is laying off 100 recruiters and is closing some engineering offices, as the downturn continues to take its toll on the Internet giant. The layoffs, disclosed Wednesday in a company blog post, are a very rare step for Google, which said in October that it is still hiring but much more cautiously. The company has also recently let go a significant number of contractors in areas ranging from public relations to engineering. Google linked the reductions affecting company recruiters to the recession. "Given the state of the economy, we recognized that we needed fewer people focused on hiring," wrote Laszlo Bock, Google's vice president for People Operations on Google's blog. "Our first step to address this was to wind down almost all our contracts with external contractors and vendors providing recruiting services for Google. However, after much consideration, we have with great regret decided that we need to go further and reduce the overall size of our recruiting organization by approximately 100 positions." Google spokesman Matthew Furman said the closing of engineering offices in Texas, Norway and Sweden wasn't motivated by cost cutting and that Google will offer jobs to the 70 employees affected by the changes. Alan Eustace, Google's senior vice president for engineering and research, wrote in a blog post that the moves would help Google better coordinate its efforts across different geographic areas. Mr. Furman added that the 100 recruiters let go represents less than a quarter of Google's total recruiter population. "Overall, we will be working with [those recruiters] to try to locate them other jobs at Google," he said. He said that the company didn't have plans to announce any further cuts at this time. In recent months, Google has taken measures such as reducing the hours of its food service and giving employees cellphones instead of year-end cash bonuses. During Google's third-quarter earnings call in October, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said that the company would continue to keep a close eye on costs. So far, Google's search-advertising business has held up well, in part because its advertising is more cost-effective than other forms of online ads. As of November, Google had 20,123 full-time employees. -- ================================ George Antunes, Political Science Dept University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204 Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927 Mail: antunes at uh dot edu *********************************** * POST TO [email protected] * *********************************** Medianews mailing list [email protected] http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
