The high-tech crisis resulted in the layoffs of thousands of workers among Israeli companies in Israel and abroad, but the biggest victims are not the high-tech people – the experienced programmers and engineers – but other professionals who until recently were employed in high-tech companies in large numbers. Not only has the number of those laid off increased recently, with the second wave of the cuts in the giant companies, including Meta, Amazon and Salesforce, but also the length of time needed to find a new job. The average number of months to search increased from 10.8 on average to 13.3, a 23% increase over the time that passed between November last year and March this year.
A study conducted for Globes by the high-tech placement company Ethosia, shows that the officials whose new job search period has been especially extended are the finance people in high-tech companies, who spend an average of 14 weeks looking for a job during this period, compared to 9 weeks in November of last year. Among administration personnel, the length of time to search for a job in the field increased from 6.5 weeks to 10, and human resources and recruitment personnel who already suffered from a particularly high job search in November: 18 weeks on average, which recently extended to 20. According to the estimate, about half of the layoffs at Meta Global came from the recruiting teams around the world, and also at other tech giants – the recruiters – those who were hired quickly during the Corona years to establish product, development and engineering teams – were the first to pay the price of the high-tech crisis.
“Extremely high-quality candidates were also thrown into the market”
Bat El Segal-Dramon, specialized in the position known as “sourcing” – an internal recruiter in companies that helps locate candidates on social networks, manage the recruitment processes, and make sure that as many of them as possible agree to sign. The field grew especially during the Corona years when the competition for employees was particularly great and it was especially important to maintain continuous contact with quality candidates with many choices.
“In 2021, the market was flooded so that I would be interviewed three to four times a week. As a prostitute, they offered to triple my salary and agreed to finance me an ‘oper’ to take care of my children,” she says.
In February Segal-Dramon was fired from her job at PayPal, after almost a year and a half, along with a large part of the recruitment team. “We went to a stagnant market,” she says. “If a year or a year and a half ago it looked like a supermarket where you only had to choose the desired job from full shelves, the experience today is that of an empty supermarket with a few expired products left. You enter the LinkedIn network and hear your own echo. The point is that the supply of candidates in a field is large Especially, and many of them are very high-quality candidates who were suddenly released into the market.”
Segal-Dramon was indeed fired just over a month ago, but the paucity of jobs and the large number of candidates led her to think about alternatives. “I was faced with the possibility of signing unemployment or changing fields.” In the end, she decided to stick to the field of human resources, but found it outside of the high-tech industry. You will soon start working for an Israeli company in the field of data services.
The rest are responsible for several areas at the same time
“The situation of the human resources people has been serious for a long time, so the worsening over time to find a new job is additional and not essential,” says Eyal Solomon, founder and CEO of Ethosia, which specializes in placing employees for high-tech and life sciences companies. “Their situation is worse than during the outbreak of the Corona because Back then they still needed them to retain the employees who moved to remote work. The decision of the giant corporations to fire thousands of workers resulted in the fact that, according to the key of a senior human resources manager, for every 150 or 200 workers, hundreds of workers in the field found themselves in a situation of job search. At the same time, small and medium start-ups have stuck to managers who perform several tasks at the same time – such as welfare and employer branding in addition to recruitment. Unfortunately, recruitment managers in the field are positioned as supporters of combat – and they are the first to come out when there is a crisis.”
Little Anchory was employed as a recruiter in an American fintech corporation for over a year, until she received an application from Meta, who attracted her to a rapidly growing group of recruiters. When she started working, the war broke out in Ukraine and interest rates in the US began to climb, and soon she and her unions found themselves in a continuous reduction of the scope of work that culminated in the first wave of layoffs in the company, in November of last year.
Ankuri chose Meta after countless companies courted her last year. When she was released to the market, she decided to go back to the messages she received from other recruiters but encountered the same answer: the position is no longer relevant. “The contrast between the high demand for high-tech recruiters in 2021 and the beginning of 2022 and the situation today is so great that it is impossible to compare the two periods at all,” she says. Those fired from Meta in November were soon joined by hundreds of other companies, including giant corporations such as Amazon, Microsoft and Salesforce, who flooded the market with additional recruiters. “I faced a dilemma,” she says. “Is it time to look for a new job? Should we be flexible with the requirements – the high-tech companies are mainly looking for working hands in the field of recruitment – or should we continue to look for the ideal job?”.
Ankuri, who has over ten years of experience in the field of recruitment, decided to take the extensive knowledge and experience in building strategies and managing complex recruitment processes and become independent, with her target audience being small and medium high-tech companies that recruit employees. These companies, according to Anchory, cannot and do not always know how to manage effective recruitment processes, if they recruit at all.
She is sure that there is a market for strategic consultants in the field, even if as subcontractors. “Experienced consultants have economic value: they can save companies from unnecessary meetings with unsuitable employees, manage more correct recruitment processes for them and help them choose recruitment and assessment tools. I decided that I wanted to offer my knowledge and experience as an external and not internal consultant in a position smaller than my size,” she teller
“Candidates understand that the salary has to be compromised”
The number of jobs in Ethosia’s database in the fields of software and hardware was reduced by more than half between April 2022 and November 2022, but in the fields of human resources and recruitment it is smaller by a greater proportion. The number of jobs in the field is down by two-thirds and recruitment jobs have decreased 8 times. The salary, of course, has decreased accordingly: an experienced recruiter with 2-5 years of experience earned between 17 and 22 thousand shekels a month in 2021. Today, he has to compromise on a salary that ranges from 11 to – 13 thousand shekels only. An experienced HR manager who earned NIS 28-30 in 2021 will receive a salary offer ranging from NIS 21 to 23.5 thousand.
Solomon: “The average salary is about half as much. It’s a matter of how many choices you have and how you perceive the role and professional security. An experienced engineer can afford to be interviewed and receive more offers – he doesn’t always have to compromise, but if you’re invited for an interview once every two weeks, you know you’ll end up compromising” .