I asked my recruiter specifically if they were in a hiring freeze (I'm in the middle of the application process now), and she was very adamant that they were not. If they were, they would lay off the whole HR department, except for a skeleton crew needed for benefits and such. After all, why spend ~40M/year on recruiters if you're not recruiting?
One company I worked for, they always used to be run by people who'd come up through the line of business, the thing the company was known for. Somehow, tho', they ended up with the company lawyer as CEO and the former head of HR as his lieutenant. It was all downhill from there but the HR department I assume were happy, since they were now consulted on every action...
Retention. Turn-over. Keeping a "hot list". Getting rid of under-performing groups by replacing them with new blood.
Those are some of the reasons. Also sometimes HR departments are just several months behind the times.
Not trying to rain on your parade. I just wouldn't take that argument too seriously in a general situation. In this particular situation, I think Google is doing great and believe they probably are hiring.
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.
