[mjr00]

In my experience "hiring freeze" at a large company usually means "hiring freeze, but..."

Exceptions can and will be made, but need higher level approvals. The problem at these companies is that managers just want to infinitely expand their teams, because more people in your chain of command = more important manager, so they tend to use all of their budget regardless of whether they actually need to expand staff by 10% this year. Naturally, these approved hires tend to be specialized senior positions that are seen as business-critical.

In general, I think anyone with 10+ years experience will be fine, but now's a shit time to be a new grad trying to break into the market.

[hotpotamus]

Oh, I pretty much get all that, but I'm just saying that even if there was a 100% freeze, a recruiter at said company still needs to look busy somehow, but of course they're in a silly position if that's the case; though I assume they still have mouths to feed and provide health insurance for.