'Heartbroken, devastated': Laid off Google recruiters turn to LinkedIn for support

Layoffs: Google parent Alphabet had cut about 12,000 jobs in January, reducing its workforce by 6%.

As Google parent Alphabet laid off hundreds of employees from its global recruiting team, several people who received the shock news of job loss took to LinkedIn to announce the news and look for new opportunities.

Alphabet is the first "Big Tech" company to lay off employees this quarter, after peers like Meta, Microsoft and Amazon downsized aggressively earlier in 2023 as a weak economy put an end to their pandemic-led hiring sprees.

Once such employee who lost her job is a technical recruiter based in Seattle, working with the tech giant for the last four years.

“I struggle making this post but unfortunately today I got laid off at my dream company,” she wrote on LinkedIn. She said Google had changed her life for the better.

“Welp, it happened! I was laid off this morning along with many talented individuals in Google's recruiting organisation,” another Google recruiter in Colorado wrote.

In a poignant note, a Seattle-based technical recruiter who got laid off said she had never dreamed of working at Google.

“Growing up in a small town and attending a small university, I never dreamed of working at Google. It was too big of a dream for me. But I got the job, and it was the best experience of my life. It was more than I could have ever imagined,” she wrote.

“I am devastated and I am heartbroken. I loved to tell people I worked at Google,” she added, reaching out to her professional network for new jobs.

Support poured in for the laid off employees who took to social media as former colleagues and mentors promised to offer all the help they could.Google had announced mass layoffs in January this year, announcing that 12,000 workers worldwide would be impacted.

CEO Sundar Pichai had said the layoffs were necessitated by the economic downturn and required for the long-term health of the company. “The fact that these changes will impact the lives of Googlers weighs heavily on me, and I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here,” he had written, noting that as an almost 25-year-old company, it was bound to face periods of slow growth.