What should a recruiting team do during a hiring freeze?

The truth, within days, individually. Anyone at final stage deserves a phone call rather than an email. Say the role is paused, explain honestly whether you expect it to return and roughly when, and ask if they are open to being contacted. Do not leave people in a pipeline that has stopped moving while you wait for clarity, because clarity often takes months and by then your reputation in that talent community has already been set. Candidates who are told early will speak well of you afterwards. Those left waiting will tell a different story, and in specialised markets that story circulates quickly among exactly the people you will need when hiring resumes.

The things that always lose to live requisitions. Rewrite scorecards for the role families you hire most. Clean the candidate database so past applicants are searchable and consent records are current. Train interviewers properly and calibrate them on real profiles. Analyse where your last year of hires actually came from and which channels earned their cost. Fix the careers page and the application flow, then test them yourself on a phone. Document the process so a new recruiter could run it. This is unglamorous and it is the only time you will have for it, and every item shortens your first search once the freeze lifts. Pick two of these and finish them properly rather than starting six and completing none.

Lightly, and only where you can be honest about the situation. Maintaining relationships with a handful of people for roles that will certainly return is legitimate, provided you tell them there is no live vacancy and you are keeping in touch for when there is. Most senior candidates accept that framing. What is not legitimate is running full interview loops for a role you cannot offer, since that wastes their time and yours and guarantees they decline later. Keep the list small enough that you can maintain genuine contact. A talent pool of thousands of names nobody has spoken to is a database, not a pipeline, and it converts accordingly.

Write the restart plan while the freeze is still on, because hiring usually resumes with less notice than it stopped. Rank the roles that will reopen first by business impact and expected difficulty. Note what each search will need in weeks and effort. Record which candidates from the paused searches are worth calling immediately and why. Keep the requisition records intact in your applicant tracking system so the history is not lost when the people who ran the search have moved on. Then agree with leadership what triggers the restart. Teams that treat a freeze as a stoppage lose a month re-learning. Teams that treat it as preparation start with a shortlist.