While I do not know specifically about AirBnB, I can tell you that Temporary “Hiring Freezes” are common in all growth companies and do not necessarily point to anything sinister.
As a former executive in a major Silicon Valley company, we were subject to hiring freezes constantly.
They can be company wide, regional, departmental or only affect a single job type.
They can happen for any number of reasons:
Over-staffing (the company may have forcasted more jobs than needed, for whatever reason)
ROI (the cost/benefit analysis of the position has changed)
Restructuring (mergers, acquisitions, closures, etc)
Upskilling (internal employees are being trained to take the available positions)
Sunspots (I like to say this instead of miscellaneous – sounds more festive.)
Another thing about most hiring freezes is that the majority of employees would have absolutely no idea. If it was of the “departmental”, “regional” or “specific job” variety, likely only responsible hiring manager and recruiter (and that chain) would be aware.
I remember once trying to explain to one of my employees that we couldn’t hire an expected replacement because of a hiring freeze, and they couldn’t get past the fact that another department had just hired 5 employees and was interviewing for more. In that particular instance, it came down to budgeting, as we had forecasted in an annual raise for people that was now being reallocated. We could keep it in if we didn’t hire the other position, so we froze it out until the next budget cycle.
Additionally, there is little-spoken-of but very well known SEO trick for companies. Job boards have a very high PageRank, so if you want a fairly cheap form of advertising, you can simply blast them with as many jobs as you can think of. It’s much cheaper than google ads for the ROI.
Originally Posted: https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-Airbnb-currently-has-a-hiring-freeze-If-so-does-this-mean-that-they-are-having-growth-issues
Originally Posted On: 2016-03-08