For 12 months we tracked every company in a sample of 8,400 mid-market SaaS that did a layoff round. ~31% of them quietly started backfilling within 90 days. The reply rate, if you outbound during that rehire window, is 4.1× the cold benchmark. Almost nobody is doing this.
The setup
In late 2024 a customer asked us a question we couldn't answer: "what if we triggered outbound on companies that did a layoff and then started hiring again, two months later?" The thesis: that's the exact moment when a team is broken, fragile, and budget for "fix" is suddenly available.
We didn't have layoff detection. We had hiring detection. So we built layoff inference from press-mention signals and SEC 8-Ks, then crossed it with our hiring-spike data.
The data
Of the 8,400 mid-market SaaS we sampled (200–2,000 employees, B2B):
- 1,180 did at least one layoff round in the 12-month window
- 368 (31%) started backfilling within 90 days
- 247 hit the role-spike threshold inside the rehire window — at least 3 net-new roles in a single function within 30 days
- Median time from layoff to first rehire signal: 62 days
Reply rates
The interesting part. We ran a controlled test through three pilot customers' sequencers:
Cold outbound on these accounts averaged a 0.6% reply rate. The same accounts, contacted within the rehire window with a first-line that referenced the rebuild explicitly, hit a 2.5% reply rate. When the rebuild was paired with a fresh exec-level departure or hire (CEO/VP), the reply rate jumped to 6.4%.
The playbook
1. Detect the layoff
Two signals to combine: press mentions (layoffs.fyi, TechCrunch, company press releases) and SEC 8-K filings (for US public). In Radar, set a rule on press signals with the keyword filter layoff OR reduction OR restructuring.
2. Wait for the rehire
Watch for hiring-spike signals on the same company. Three or more net-new roles in a single function (Sales, Eng, Product) within 30 days. Combined-event score in Radar will hit 80+ automatically.
3. The first line
Don't be cute about the layoff. Don't say "saw you had to make tough decisions". Reference the rebuild directly:
Subject: rebuild · sales hires
Saw the four AE roles open up at Acme. Rebuilding after right-sizing is the hardest 90 days a CRO has — the team needs to ramp on different ramp curves than the last cohort, with less margin for slow weeks.
4. The CTA
Don't pitch a tool. Pitch a 15-minute compare-notes call with another CRO who just did the same thing.
Caveats
This sample is mid-market SaaS only. The pattern is less reliable in regulated industries (banks, healthcare) where rehire windows can be 6–12 months and tied to fiscal cycles, not the labor market. And it doesn't work in early-stage startups where every "layoff" is below the press-mention threshold.
The other caveat: this is a real human moment. Be a person. If your outbound feels parasitic, it is. The teams who win this play are the ones who are useful, not the ones who are first.
Set this up in Radar
If you're already on Team or Scale, the rule template is in your workspace at Rules → Templates → Layoff-then-rehire. One toggle.
If you're not, the demo takes 30 minutes and we can pre-populate this rule against your ICP before the call.