Getting a job at Tesla may be harder than ever these days. Not necessarily because the company is raising the bar for its new hires, but rather because the company appears to be decreasing the number of new team members it brings aboard. As originally reported by Thinknum, it would appear that Elon Musk’s car company has recently experienced a rather precipitous decline in the number of hires it’s making. As of May 10, 2018, Tesla was looking to fill a total of 3,124 positions. And now, just one month later, there are only 2,049 open roles at the company. That represents a significant decrease in the span of just a few weeks.
Of course, it could be the case that Tesla has recently gone on a hiring spree, and managed to hire over 1,100 people (1,165 to be exact) in just a month. That said, it seems highly unlikely that this is the explanation. After all, that would mean that the company was onboarding about 46 people every single workday — a brisk pace even for a company as forward-looking as Tesla.
The decline in job postings is also notable considering that Tesla recently noted that it would look to hire about 400 people each week in order to keep up with Model 3 production demand at its Fremont, California plant. As Thinknum points out, the number of jobs available in Fremont are also down (proportionally compared to the rest of the company’s locations).
Apparently, much of the decline in job postings happened quite recently. Just one week ago, Tesla had 2,677 open positions on its website. As of today, June 11, there are just 2,049, which means that 628 positions were removed in the last seven days. Moreover, Thinknum pointed out that a comparative analysis between the jobs available on May 10 and June 10 showed that around 1,600 positions have been removed since last month. That can mean that some jobs were likely reposted and then removed, or that other jobs were added as folks were hired for existing positions.
Tesla has yet to comment on what these rather large fluctuations in job postings really means, but we will be sure to keep you updated with any news regarding the matter.