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Google moves all job interviews to Hangouts ‘for the foreseeable future’ due to coronavirus

Google moves all job interviews to Hangouts ‘for the foreseeable future’ due to coronavirus

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Amazon and Facebook have also limited on-site job interviews

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Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge

Google has begun informing prospective job candidates that it will be moving all interviews globally to Google Hangouts or BlueJeans due to coronavirus, according to an email sent to one applicant from the Google staffing team.

“In light of the coronavirus (COVID-19) and to protect our candidates’ and interviewers’ health and wellbeing, we will be conducting all Google interviews globally virtually via Google Hangout (or BlueJeans for applicable countries) for the foreseeable future,” Google says in the email, which The Verge has reviewed. Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Google isn’t the first to cancel on-site interviews in light of the ongoing coronavirus outbreak. On Monday, Facebook said it would be canceling most in-person job interviews, and Amazon put on-site job interviews on hold indefinitely last week.

Google has taken a number of additional actions to prevent the spread of coronavirus as well. Yesterday, the company canceled the in-person portion of Google I/O, its biggest event of the year. It is also giving away access to Hangouts Meet, made the upcoming Google Cloud Next event online-only after canceling the in-person conference, and has limited employee travel.

There have been more than 94,000 cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, and over 3,200 deaths. Numerous companies are taking measures, from canceling conferences and severely limiting employee travel to expanding work-from-home policies, in response.

Update, March 6th, 2:45PM ET: Clarified that only Google Cloud Next’s in-person conference has been canceled and that Google has made the event online-only.