Twitter has laid off a third of its recruiting team amid Elon Musk takeover drama

• Twitter has laid off a third of its recruiting team.
• Twitter said in May it was pausing most hiring and backfilling, aside for business-critical roles.

Twitter has laid off some of its recruiting teams two months after implementing a hiring freeze amid a takeover bid from Elon Musk.

About a third of the talent acquisition team was affected, according to Thursday reports from various media outlets including The Wall Street Journal and TechCrunch. A representative for Twitter confirmed the layoffs to Insider.

Fewer than 100 people were affected by the layoffs, The Journal reported, citing Twitter. Twitter employs more than 7,000 people globally.

In May, the company said it was pausing most hiring and backfilling. The layoffs on Thursday were to align Twitter with its new business needs, the representative for the company said.

Twitter's layoffs came after Musk — who has put in a $44 billion bid to buy the social media platform — hinted at job cuts during a town hall meeting on June 16, reported Insider's Dominick Reuter and Kali Hays.

"We need to make more than we spend," Musk said, per the Insider report, citing a person who was at the meeting.

Musk's Twitter acquisition still hangs in balance. Since he put in his offer in April, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO has zoomed in on spam and bot accounts on the social media platform.

In May, Musk said he was putting the deal "on hold" until Twitter proves that fewer than 5% of its accounts are fake, as his bid was based on the company's SEC filing being accurate. Twitter said in a May 2 SEC filing that fewer than 5% of accounts on its platform were fake.