A tipster tries to convince us Google's cutting cost and clamping down on hiring:

I have heard grumblings of a hiring freeze at Google. Apparently the service staff haven't been able to bring on new people and an external company has been "auditing" the company since february. (read: efficiency experts and axe sharpening) While not bringing on new service people might not raise much an alarm, there also seems to be a significant cut in engineering recruiting with qualified candidates not even getting a phone interview.

We're pretty sure that Google is still aggressively courting top talent, and with unemployment up that means they can be even pickier about granting interviews. Don't lash out at Google just because they don't pick up the phone — after all, a 3.49 undergraduate GPA doesn't get you a callback to take care of Googler spawn.

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