What happened to IT Hiring After January 2026????
I just wanted to know whether anyone else in the IT industry is facing the same situation right now.
Currently, I’m working in a startup company in a cybersecurity role, and for the past one year I’ve been trying to switch companies. During 2025 — especially around Sep, Oct, Nov, and Dec — I was getting a lot of interview calls continuously. I attended interviews with GCC companies, fintech companies, startups, MNCs, and Big 4 related opportunities because I also had previous experience in EY.
At one point, I was attending back-to-back interviews within the same week. But unfortunately, I couldn’t crack most of them. In many cases, after the interview, HRs would completely ghost me. Sometimes the role would suddenly get frozen, and sometimes I’d just get rejected after multiple rounds.
Then in Jan 2026, I attended an interview with an MNC, but after that I didn’t get any update either.
What’s confusing me now is this: from Jan 2026 till now (May 2026), I’m barely getting any interview calls at all. Almost 5 months. The effort from my side is still the same — applying continuously, updating resume, networking, reaching out to people — but compared to last year, the number of calls has dropped heavily.
What makes me more confused is that during March-April-May last year, I was getting many calls from companies like KPMG, PwC, BDO, etc., and I eventually joined my current startup in June 2025 for a different role opportunity. Even after joining, I again started getting interview calls around Sep-Jan. But now, during what I thought was usually the hiring season, there’s almost nothing.
Many of my friends and colleagues are saying that hiring is frozen in a lot of companies, especially MNCs, due to layoffs, budget cuts, recession concerns, etc.
So I just wanted to ask:
- Is anyone else in IT facing this kind of slowdown in hiring right now?
- Are companies actually freezing hiring?
- Or is the market just becoming extremely competitive compared to last year?
Would really like to hear opinions from people across different IT domains.