Amid the slew of recent layoff headlines, a question lingers: when a company cuts jobs, who is first on the chopping block?
According to new data from BambooHR, a human resources software company, 65% of HR professionals typically approach layoffs by eliminating newly hired workers first. The report surveyed over 1,500 employees and human resource professionals from December 19 to January 4. Overall, it found that employees believe that in a wave of job cuts, the likelihood of getting laid off is 62% for recent hires and 20% for longstanding employees.
The report also says that over half of the employees surveyed want to know why employers decide to lay off certain roles. That need for transparency about layoff decisions is part of the reason many employers have historically decided to let go more recent hires first, according to Sandra Sucher, a professor at Harvard Business School who studies layoffs.
"It was something that was relatively easy to explain, which matters when it comes to involuntary terminations," Sucher tells CNBC Make It. "Because people need and want to have an explanation."
Why new hires first?
Of course, there are other layoff methods that companies can use, but they are not nearly as easy or straightforward as eliminating based on tenure, according to Sarah Rodehorst, the chief executive of the human resources company Onwards HR. A company could cut jobs based on skills or performance, for instance, but managers would need access to that related data to adequately explain why an employee's skills or performance was not enough to keep them.
"So why a lot of organizations gravitate to tenure is because it's easy. It's a very objective element that is readily available for companies," says Rodehorst.
Anita Grantham, the head of HR at BambooHR, said that given today's tenuous economic landscape, job seekers should do more due diligence about how their prospective companies handle layoffs to avoid landing somewhere that will let them go as soon as they get in.
But even as layoffs spread across industries, Grantham says some companies are still hiring. She says laid-off new hires need to be smart about how they get back into the job hunt.
The No. 1 rule to rebound
If you end up out the company door just as soon as you stepped inside, Sucher says there's one thing that really matters to rebound in the job market: how you frame your narrative.
"People who fare best after having been let go are able to say and believe that this was a decision that the company made for economic reasons, and it does not have to do with my performance," says Sucher. "The sooner you can get to the point of saying, 'That's on them and not me,' the more positive mindset you'll have."
Shifting the burden of your layoff onto external economic factors tells a more accurate and valuable story to future employers because often, and especially in the current economic moment, a layoff is not your fault and employers understand that, says Rodehorst.
Rodehorst adds that employees should be vocal about telling their layoff stories, even on social media like LinkedIn because nowadays that is where recruiters are searching for candidates. BambooHR's study reports that 43% of HR professionals use LinkedIn to vet candidates.
"Everyone understands this is no longer a scarlet letter to be worn," says Rodehorst. "It is a fault of the economics that are happening right now. It is the fault of a lot of the decisions that companies have made along the way."
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