The 2025 job market crisis: mass IT layoffs, exec hiring mistakes and AI in HR
No Bullsh!t, July 16, 2025, 89 min, 3,220 views. Sergey Kuznetsov talks with Anna Alfimova, managing partner of a career practice and a career consultant for senior executives, about the labour market crisis of 2025.
| Published | |
|---|---|
| Length | 89 min |
| Views on YouTube | 3,220 |
| Language of the episode | Russian |
| Where to watch and listen | YouTube, Spotify, Telegram |
Date, length and view count according to data from the episode page on YouTube, as of the page update date shown in the footer.
In short
Anna describes her path from sales into human resources and back into business, and shares three key failures of her career: a fear of making mistakes, a youthful expectation of reward for overwork, and ignoring her intuition when taking on a project that was not worth the resources. The conversation then turns to the state of the labour market: mass layoffs in technology, the shift from hiring ahead of demand to targeted decisions, the difference between the Russian, European and American markets, and how artificial intelligence is already changing requirements for specialists and the structure of teams. A separate block covers typical mistakes in hiring senior executives.
Key ideas
- Her main failure was not making mistakes but fearing them: excessive control and perfectionism save reputation and cost a great deal in growth.
- Not all money is equally useful: taking on a large project against her own intuition turned into a year of difficult communication and a risk of burning out the team for a small margin.
- In the 2025 labour market the business priority moved from growth to cost optimisation, and the first roles cut are those that used to be hired ahead of demand.
- The Russian and American labour markets are falling more sharply than the European one because the previous growth cycle was faster; the estimate for reaching a new equilibrium is a year and a half to two years.
- AI already replaces part of the operations in client communication and marketing, but so far there are few strong cases of monetisation inside companies.
- The three main mistakes in hiring at executive level: hiring people like yourself, looking for a magician who will solve everything, and expecting results without staying personally involved.
The full transcript
The episode is recorded in Russian, and the full transcript of the conversation is on the Russian page of this episode. English and Spanish subtitles for the strongest episodes are rolling out on YouTube in waves.
Open the transcript