Lay off the entire HR department? The only reason you'd do that is if you were in a permanent hiring freeze death spiral. Recruiting works as a pipeline. So

Lay off the entire HR department? The only reason you'd do that is if you were in a permanent hiring freeze death spiral. Recruiting works as a pipeline. So even if you're in a hiring freeze, which Google likely is, you still want to have folks lined up for interviews. Worst case scenario is that you end up interviewing a bunch of folks and can't offer them a position. However, if you just stop recruiting activity altogether then you'll have more than a month worth of lead time to start getting new hires after the hiring freeze is lifted.