What HR needs to know about hiring in the wake of a layoff

Would news of another layoff announcement make you want to throw in the towel? Bear with us—at least until the end of this article…

Travel company Expedia announced layoffs affecting 162 employees earlier this week while simultaneously boasting about new job openings, the Seattle Times reported. Expedia is not alone in making such an announcement: Financial software company Intuit followed a similar playbook when, after laying off 1,800 employees in 2024, it shared plans to hire for thousands of new AI roles, HR Brew previously reported.

What’s going on? Some companies have been redirecting funds from talent to tech in response to investor demands and competitor pressures to double down on AI, Daniel Zhao, chief economist at Glassdoor, previously told HR Brew.

“They might be incentivized right now to say that [layoffs are] because of AI, because they know that other companies are signaling this, and they know that investors are wondering whether they’re implementing AI at a time when all their competitors are,” Zhao said in November 2025.

How does this strategy impact employees? When companies try to hire beneath the shadow of a mass layoff, it can spook candidates, who may feel uneasy about working for an organization that just made cuts, Joe Mull, an employee commitment expert, previously told HR Brew.

“Companies end up shooting themselves in the foot,” Mull told HR Brew in 2024. “If you have a tarnished reputation, or…if it’s just a perception that, ‘Hey, this organization is quick to lay off people,’ then that organization may end up having to overpay to acquire talent.”

Why fire and then hire? When companies conduct layoffs, only to turn around and hire new talent, some may wonder: Why didn’t they just upskill or reskill their existing employees? Cy Wakeman, author and founder of leadership consulting firm Reality-Based Leadership, previously told HR Brew that upskilling and reskilling usually takes more time than hiring talent with the skills.

“What companies have to look at, in talent, is we can buy it, which is hiring it. We can rent it, which is like gig economy or consultants. Or we can build it,” Wakeman told HR Brew in July 2024. “When you look at the gap between what people were doing and what you need them to do, if the gap [of reskilling takes] over 18 months, we usually don’t decide to build the talent.”

Best practices. While communicating a layoff is never easy, there are best practices HR can follow. “It’s not a mass email. It’s certainly not deactivating people’s badges before they walk in the door,” Michele Bousquet, Strava’s chief people officer, told an audience at LinkedIn’s Talent Connect conference in 2024.

There should also be a coordinated effort, or “tiger team,” between the CEO, HR, legal, and communications when companies are about to announce a layoff, Teal Pennebaker, a founding partner at Shallot Communications, previously told HR Brew.

“[Layoffs] often require an outside person, a comms person, who can come in and be another set of eyes to say, ‘Hey, I hear that you need to get XYZ across, but in order for this to land with employees in a way that feels compassionate, why don’t we consider doing it in ABC way?’” Pennebaker said.