Samwise High Tech Recruiting Newsletter
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Oracle’s SEC Filing Formally Blames AI as 2026 Tech Layoffs Top 225,000
Tech layoffs in 2026 topped 225,000 workers as of September 25, surpassing all of last year’s 205,773 in nine months, the Skillsyncer tracker shows. Oracle, which cut roughly 21,000 jobs this year, became the first major tech company to formally attribute workforce reductions to AI in a legally binding SEC filing. The disclosure stated the ‘adoption and deployment of AI technologies…have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce.’ Oracle simultaneously raised $43 billion in new debt to fund AI infrastructure, recording $1.84 billion in restructuring charges. The current pace puts 2026 on track for an estimated 370,000 total layoffs.
Sources: TechTimes, Skillsyncer
ServiceNow Executes 287-Job WARN Cut Across Two California Sites
ServiceNow completed its second wave of 2026 California layoffs on September 28, as 287 employees in Santa Clara and San Diego were let go under WARN Act notices filed in July. The second round, combined with 117 workers cut in August, brings ServiceNow’s 2026 California total to 404 positions across the same two campuses. The company said it is ‘managing headcount with discipline to end 2026 where we started’ while actively hiring for AI-focused roles. The 287 jobs represent roughly 1.4 percent of global headcount. No reason was stated in government filings, though earlier company statements cited AI efficiencies within the business.
Sources: WARNTracker, Final Round AI
77% of New Grads Say Employers Set the Bar Too High for Entry-Level Jobs
Seventy-seven percent of recent U.S. graduates say employers demand excessive experience for entry-level roles, according to a new Cengage employability study of 931 hiring managers, 759 college instructors, and 1,100 graduates surveyed between April and August 2026. Fifty-three percent of graduates skipped applying to entry-level jobs believing they were unqualified, up from 48 percent in 2025, while 75 percent report a shortage of truly entry-level openings. Entry-level postings on Handshake rose just 1 percent year-over-year, and employers posted nearly double the opportunities for the class of 2022 compared with 2026. Perceived degree value dropped to 37 percent from 68 percent in 2022.
LinkedIn’s Hiring Assistant Takes Center Stage at Talent Connect 2026
LinkedIn’s annual Talent Connect conference opened September 28 at the Javits Center in New York City, running through today with AI-powered recruiting as its organizing theme. CEO Dan Shapero keynotes alongside author Brenée Brown and Cisco VP Scott McGuckin. Four content pillars anchor the program: AI Evaluation and Value Proof, Workforce Readiness and Change Management, Building Trust in AI, and Putting AI to Work. LinkedIn Hiring Assistant, the company’s AI recruiting agent, is the event’s centerpiece product; charter customers report 62 percent fewer profiles reviewed, 69 percent better InMail acceptance, and 30 percent faster time-to-fill.
Salary.com Launches SalaryTalent to Put Pay Intelligence at Center of Every Hiring Decision
Salary.com, a compensation data company founded in 1999, launched SalaryTalent on September 28 — an AI-native talent management platform integrating five products: Recruiting, Candidate Sourcing, Performance Management, Workforce Management, and HR Agent Orchestration. The platform draws on 30,000-plus company datasets across 140 countries to embed real-time pay intelligence into hiring, performance, and career decisions. ‘Start from the value of work, and everything downstream gets better: the offer, the rating, the promotion. Pay is the foundation,’ CEO Yong Zhang said. More than 10,000 organizations use Salary.com tools. A 30-day bootcamp trial using the customer’s own data is available ahead of commitment.
Sources: GlobeNewswire
HiringCafe Raises $6.8M to Tackle the Hidden Job Market with AI Talent Agents
HiringCafe, an AI-powered job discovery platform in San Francisco, raised $6.8 million in pre-seed funding led by Spark Capital, with participation from Nonfiction Capital, Silicon Gardens, and angels from ZipRecruiter and Indeed. The platform indexes employer career pages in real time to surface 5.7 million active listings — up to 400 percent more than mainstream job boards — for its two million monthly users. A free AI Talent Agent launched alongside the raise lets candidates upload resumes for skill parsing and continuous job scouting. ‘They only show you a fraction of jobs companies pay to promote, which creates hyper-competition and widespread burnout,’ co-founder Hamed Nilforoshan said.
Sources: The Next Web, HR Tech Feed
Nearly Half of Workers Admit Exaggerating Their AI Use as Pressure Mounts
Nearly half of full-time U.S. workers — 48 percent — exaggerate their AI usage or expertise at least sometimes, according to a Visier survey of 1,000 employees. Forty-five percent feel pressure to use AI even when they lack confidence. Workers cited upskilling (32 percent), greater leader transparency (31 percent), and career advancement opportunities (24 percent) as the most helpful employer interventions. Only 12 percent said no employer action would build their confidence, underscoring researchers’ warning that measuring AI adoption as compliance — rather than genuine engagement — risks masking real productivity gaps. The findings were reported by HR Brew on September 28.
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Curated by JD · samwise.agency