LinkedIn has announced its second round of job cuts in 2023, with 668 employees set to be laid off from the company. The layoffs will affect various departments, including engineering, talent, and finance, and amount to over 3% of LinkedIn’s 20,000-strong workforce.
These job cuts are reflective of the broader trend in the technology sector, which has seen tens of thousands of job losses this year due to economic uncertainty.
“Talent changes are a difficult, but necessary and regular part of managing our business,” the company said in a statement.
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“While we are adapting our organizational structures and streamlining our decision making, we are continuing to invest in strategic priorities for our future and to ensure we continue to deliver value for our members and customers.”
“We are committed to providing our full support to all impacted employees during this transition and ensuring that they are treated with care and respect.”
LinkedIn generates revenue through advertising sales and subscriptions for recruiting and sales professionals. However, the company has faced challenges such as a slowdown in hiring and a decline in advertising spending, resulting in slower revenue growth.
LinkedIn’s revenue increased by 5% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of its fiscal 2023, down from 10% in the previous quarter.
Microsoft, which owns LinkedIn, has identified these challenges as headwinds for the platform. Despite this, LinkedIn continues to add new members to its extensive community of 950 million users.
This recent round of layoffs follows a previous cut of 716 jobs in May, which focused on sales, operations, and support teams. These cuts are part of LinkedIn’s efforts to streamline its operations and remove layers within the organization to facilitate quicker decision-making.
The recent job cut aligns with the prevailing trend in the technology sector, where numerous companies are substituting employees with artificial intelligence.
Earlier this month, LinkedIn introduced a range of new AI-driven product features, which encompass AI-assisted candidate discovery for recruiters. These features include improvements in natural language searches, reduced emphasis on university qualifications and job titles, as well as prompts on how a job role can be customized to match a candidate’s strengths and limitations, such as location.
LinkedIn has also incorporated AI-powered coaching into its subscriber-only LinkedIn Learning platform and introduced a chatbot service to guide workers through challenging situations or their career development.