Facebook has struggled to hire talent since the Cambridge Analytica scandal

More than half a dozen recruiters who left Facebook in recent months told CNBC that the tech company experienced a significant decrease in job offer acceptance rates after the March 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which a data firm improperly accessed the data of 87 million Facebook users and used it to target ads for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

Most notably, Facebook saw a sharp increase in students at top universities who are declining the company’s job offers.

“The privacy scandals, the Cambridge Analytica stuff — students aren’t as interested in going to Facebook anymore,” a former Facebook university recruiter said.