Recruit Holdings, which owns the job-seeking platforms Indeed and Glassdoor, is planning to cut around 1,300 jobs as part of a broader plan to consolidate operations. More importantly, though, these cuts are due to the company’s growing focus on artificial intelligence, as evidenced by a memo by its CEO Hisayuki “Deko” Idekoba.
While Recruit did not offer an explanation for the layoffs, the memo did mention that AI is “changing the world”, asserting that the company must adapt to the changes by ensuring that its product offers “truly great experiences” for the userbase. Said userbase includes employers and of course, job seekers – a demographic that has gained at least another thousand members thanks to this move.
For those currently seeking employment or have had to look for work in the past, Indeed and Glassdoor are familiar names as both are job portals allowing users to easily find available positions. The latter is also a platform for employees to rate and review companies, as well as compare salaries. At the moment, the two sites are separate entities, but Recruit is planning to integrate Glassdoor operations into Indeed. As a result of this, Glassdoor CEO Christian Sutherland-Wong will be leaving the company later this year.
There’s something incredibly ironic about losing one’s job to AI when said job involves helping people find employment. Unfortunately, this is hardly a rare occurrence, as more and more companies are reducing headcount as they favour the use of AI in their operations. Previously, Duolingo announced its pivot to becoming an “AI-first” company, which predictably did not go over well.
(Source: Reuters)
