A startup, let's say company A, I used to work at did something very similar. I told the CEO that I knew another startup was shutting down, let's call it company B.

Company A decided to something really smart: they organized an information session just for Company B engineers. I sent over the invite and 10+ engineers from Company B joined our after work event. We had free food and drink (important) and an overview of our company; our CEO asked our team to stay over afterwards to socialize and answer questions. They also had an open invite to any engineer to come onsite to interview the next week. We basically structured it like an on campus recruiting process. The event cost us maybe $300 and we ended up getting 4 of their engineers, all of whom who stayed for over 3 years.

Company A actually had huge issues, but that was the smartest thing I saw them do while there.

I did once. Didn't work out, but it was worth a shot.

Most of the good engineers are usually long gone. Before these layoffs happen, things tend to grind to a halt or move at a glacier pace internally.

I'm pretty sure you can buy the data from linkedin.

Erm... not really? For the pro account you don't get much other than the ability to message people whether they want to hear from you or not. Plus some more visibility into profiles, unlimited searching, etc. You don't get much more in terms of search fields.

--I haven't used Linkedin as a recruiter since the new UI update, so this may be different now.