I was offered and accepted a position about two weeks ago, originally with a late March start date that turned into "sometime in April." I was informed earlier this week that it would now most likely be in May, but they can't guarantee that because of the current hiring freeze, which I had not been made aware of, and this was the first time it's come up. It's also different from their previous statement of "just not wanting to hire in Q1."
This position is related to but not contingent on winning a big bid. I'm starting to think that they're taking advantage of this freeze to see if we win or not; if we do, great, if not, they rescind the offer.
My question, however, is when did this hiring freeze start? From what I can tell online, this didn't start in the past couple of weeks, which meant they absolutely knew this was going to be the case all along.