How to hire from big tech’s layoffs

2022 has been a difficult year for tech workers, with more than 121,000 losing their jobs at companies big and small. As we enter the holiday season — when budgets are tight and job security ever important — the situation doesn’t appear to be getting better.

Some of the industry’s biggest players, from Meta to Amazon, recently announced thousands of layoffs ahead of a possible economic downturn. Other companies have followed suit and will continue to do so through the end of the year, but there is a silver lining amidst the disruption.

Layoffs at big tech companies like Twitter and Salesforce present a win-win for candidates — giving them a chance to shine in a new role at a new company. We’ve covered how you can reach out to people who have been recently laid off, but what about the tactics? Finding people from these companies shouldn’t be difficult. But identifying the people who are an actual match for your company is the real challenge.

Keep reading to learn how to reach out with compassion, build recruitment automation into your process, and land talented candidates looking for a new home.

Step 1: Source specific talent from big tech layoffs

Everyone in this space knows what’s happening in the market, making the competition for talent that much more intense. Workers from Meta, Twitter, Amazon, and other tech giants are a hot commodity — they won’t be “free agents” for long.

With companies like yours searching from the same pool as hundreds of other interested parties, landing a candidate can often feel like more of a right time, right place proposition. Attribute-search helps you go beyond resumes and keywords to find the talent ready for a transition to a company like yours!

Findem allows hiring teams to cast their searches across more than 100,000 data sources, and provides them with the most complete picture of each candidate. This gives sourcers and recruiters the ability to look deeper than just job title or most recent company; opening their searches to avenues competitors aren’t exploring.

For example, if a recruiter wanted to see a collection of laid off candidates, they could filter the pool by specific attributes in Findem’s platform, including:

• Recent layoff - Candidate list
• Recent layoff - Company list
• Actively looking for new opportunity

Going deeper, though, they could make the search even more specific. Let’s say their talent leader is looking for someone who has seen a company through an IPO or has a PhD, or someone who identifies as having an ‘entrepreneurial spirit. Findem allows for such a granular breakdown, ensuring candidates aren’t just from the bigger companies, but that they match your company’s requirements.

With more than 1 million unique attributes available in the platform, it’s easy to build a highly-targeted list of matching candidates. For example, here’s how to source for innovation and passion.

Step 2: Let recruiting automation handle the busywork

Attribute-searching for candidates is a start, but it’s not enough to lure them from the market to your office. Recruiting automation establishes automatic workflows for what would normally be manual recruiting or HR activities, freeing up your recruiters’ time and giving your company a competitive advantage.

Rather than spend time sourcing candidates and scheduling interviews, recruiting automation gives recruiters the freedom to start moving pre-vetted candidates through the hiring cycle before less nimble companies can act.

Knowing what you know about the recent influx of talent on the market, it’s easy to identify your company’s ideal candidate profile. You know you want someone who’s worked at one of the aforementioned companies, likely with experience in a specific discipline or piece of software. Findem not only allows you to search for those unique attributes, but handles the repetitive work of building profiles and refreshing data to keep your searches relevant.

As more workers are impacted by the layoffs ahead, it’ll be crucial to move quickly. Recruiting automation makes your recruiters’ lives easier, surfacing the right candidates and decreasing the time to hire.

Step 3: Reach out with empathy

You’ve identified the right candidates, have the tools and processes in place to make first contact quickly, but want to do so with compassion for their difficult situation. These candidates are people, after all, and their struggle deserves to be treated as such.

Companies just like yours are trying to make a splash with a highly competitive pool of candidates. How can you stand out? We know that it normally takes three emails before a candidate will respond, so your cold email outreach is critical to making an impact. These emails should be personalized to each candidate, even if that candidate is being sourced from a large pool.

With Findem’s platform, you can use templates to reduce setup time, customize messaging, send outreach from multiple addresses, and set a preferred time for individual sends. Combined, these tactics allow your recruiters to nurture candidates through the pipeline, making it easy to build relationships quickly and move when the timing is right.

Final thought: Compassion and automation are a winning combo

While Findem’s platform can handle the business of curating data and building talent pools, compassion is a critical component in hiring candidates from big tech’s recent layoffs. You can automate outreach, make scheduling more efficient, and use AI to surface top candidates, but it’s up to your team to transition someone from candidate to new employee.

Understanding this group’s needs — and the unique attributes that make them a perfect fit for your company — is the most critical place to start. Once you know how to target within the pool of available talent, you can seize the opportunity to effectively communicate your brand story, transparently “pitch” to qualified candidates, and create a positive experience for everyone involved.