Recruiters bear the brunt of Israel’s tech crisis

The technology crisis has led to thousands of employees losing their jobs in Israeli companies in Israel and abroad. The biggest victims are not the tech staff themselves — experienced programmers and engineers — but other professionals in areas such as marketing and sales, human resources and recruiting, as well as finance, specialties that until recently worked at tech companies in droves.

Not only has the number of layoffs increased recently, with the second wave of layoffs at tech giants including Meta, Amazon and Salesforce, but so has the length of time needed to find a new job. The average number of months to find a new job increased from an average of 10.8 to 13.3, an increase of 23% since November last year.

New research by HR technology consultancy Ethosia found that candidates for whom the search period for their new job was particularly long were finance professionals at technology companies, who had spent an average of 14 weeks looking for a job since November 2022, compared to 9 weeks earlier. To November last year. Among management staff, the time it took to find a job increased from 6.5 weeks to 10 weeks, and among HR and recruiters who already experienced a particularly long period to find a job before November, the time it took increased from an average of 18 weeks to 20 weeks. It’s estimated that around half of the Meta’s layoffs worldwide have been within its recruiting teams, while also in other tech giants – the recruiters – those quickly recruited during the Covid pandemic to found production, development and engineering teams – have been the first to pay the price of the tech crisis. .

“Even particularly outstanding candidates have been put on the market.”

Batel Segal-Darmon specializes in a job called sourcing — internal recruiting for companies that help identify candidates through social media, manage the hiring process, and make sure most agree to sign. This sector has grown exceptionally during the Covid pandemic, when there was intense competition for jobs and it was important to maintain constant contact with quality candidates with many options.

She recalls, “In 2021, the market was flooded and I was interviewing three to four times a week. As an expert, they offered to triple my salary and agreed to pay for an ‘ice pair’ to take care of my kids.

In February, Sigal Darmon lost her job at PayPal after 18 months, along with most of the hiring team. “We’ve reached a dead market. If 12-18 months ago it was like a supermarket where you could choose the job you want from full shelves, today the experience is that the supermarket is empty and there are few products that have not expired.” LinkedIn enters. And hear your own echo The point is, the supply of candidates in the field is particularly large, and many of them are very high-quality candidates that have suddenly been put on the market.

While Segal Darmon was laid off from her job only a month ago, the few jobs and high number of candidates left her considering alternatives. “I was faced with the choice of signing for unemployment or changing fields.” In the end, she decided to stick with the HR field, but found a job outside of the tech industry. Soon you will start working for an Israeli company in the field of data services.

Those remaining are responsible for several regions at the same time

“The situation for HR staff has been dire for a long time, so worsening the chances of finding a new job over time is immaterial,” says Eyal Solomon, founder and CEO of Ethusia, who specializes in technology and life sciences staffing. The options are worse than they were during a pandemic. Covid as it was still required for employees who have transitioned to remote work.

“The decision of the giants to lay off thousands of employees has led to the fact that, according to the ratio of one senior HR manager for every 150 or 200 employees, hundreds of employees in this field have found themselves out of work. At the same time, small and medium-sized startups have retained departments that perform many of tasks at the same time – such as welfare and employer branding as well as recruitment. Unfortunately, hiring managers are set up as support staff and they are the first to go when there is a crisis.”

Little Anchor had been leading talent acquisition at a US fintech company for more than a year when Meta, which was growing rapidly at the time, offered it to hire professionals. As she began, war broke out in Ukraine and interest rates in the United States began to rise, and she and her colleagues soon found themselves hiring fewer and fewer staff, culminating in the first round of layoffs last November.

I chose Anchor Meta over the countless other companies I’ve dealt with in the past year. When she found herself back in the job market, she contacted companies that tried to hire here but ran into the same response over and over again: the job offer was no longer suitable.

“The discrepancy between the high demand for high-tech recruitment companies 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. Meta’s November layoffs were quickly followed by hundreds of other companies, including giants like Amazon, Microsoft and Salesforce that flooded the market with additional recruiters. “I was faced with a dilemma. Is it time to look for a new type of job? Should I be flexible with the requirements – high-tech companies are mainly looking for production workers in the field of recruitment – or should I continue to search for the perfect job?”

Ankuri, who has over 10 years of experience in recruitment, decided to take her extensive knowledge and experience in building strategies and managing complex recruitment processes and become independent with her target audience being small and medium-sized technology companies that hire employees. These companies, according to Ankory, cannot and do not always know how to run effective staffing processes, if they hire at all.

She is sure that there is a market for strategic advisors in this area, even if they are subcontractors. “Experienced consultants have economic value: they can save companies from unnecessary meetings with unsuitable employees, manage recruitment processes that are more convenient for them and help them choose recruitment and assessment tools. I decided that I wanted to offer my knowledge and experience as an outside firm rather than an internal consultant in a good position within my abilities,” she explains.

“Candidates understand that they must give up salaries”

The number of jobs on Ethosia’s books in software and hardware between April and November 2022 fell by more than half, but in human resources and staffing the rise was even higher. The number of jobs in this field has decreased by two-thirds and employment has decreased eightfold. Of course, salaries have decreased accordingly: An experienced recruit with 2 to 5 years of experience had a monthly salary of between NIS 17,000 and NIS 22,000 in 2021. Today, salaries range between NIS 11,000 and NIS 13,000. An experienced HR manager who earned NIS 28-30,000 in 2021 will today receive a salary offer of NIS 21,000-23,500.

“The average salary is about half that,” says Solomon. “It’s a matter of how many options you have and how you see your role and career security. An experienced engineer can afford to interview, receive more offers and not always have to compromise, but if you are invited to an interview once Just every two weeks, you know you’re going to end up compromising.”

Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on March 26, 2023.

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