LinkedIn Let's the Cat out of the Bag

Most of my professional life, I've worked for small start ups (50-150 employees). Just as with larger corporations, start-up companies go through turbulent years and may experience lay-offs. I've weathered many lay-offs at various companies that I've worked for, although in recent years, I've found that the language has changed. They are no longer lay-offs, but RIFs (Reduction in Force).

It used to be that whenever a Lay-off would come, surviving employees would be called together, either in small groups or in a larger "all-hands" meeting. The executive staff would sometimes describe the reasons for the lay-off ... err, RIF, explain why it was necessary, how we would all need to pull together, work harder with less -- you know the drill.

Invariably, Human Resources would step up at the end, and remind all employees that they must not discuss the RIF with anyone outside the company. If any employees were contacted by outside recruiting firms or companies looking for the names of "termed employees", the callers should be immediately referred to HR.

I'm not sure how effectively that worked in the old days, but I know it's not working very effectively in our Web 2.0 world today. Here's a telephone conversation I had with a former business colleague, who still works at the company I left several years ago.

ME: "So you guys got some big lay-offs recently, huh?"

HER: "Oh my god ... how did you know? No one outside the company is supposed to know. They just announced it! They're still calling people down for their exit interviews."

I shared a couple names of folks I thought who might be on the "termed employee" list.

HER: "Ok, now, you're freaking me out. I just saw him walk by with HR and an empty cardboard box. They were going down to clear out his office. How did you know?"

ME: "LinkedIn."

HER: "Huh?"

ME: "LinkedIn. I was just scrolling through the Network Updates of my LinkedIn connections, and I saw a whole bunch of recommendations being written up by folks who work there."

I've commented about LinkedIn before on this blog. LinkedIn is a social networking group focused on "connecting academic and business colleagues together, even as they change jobs and careers". One of the neat features of LinkedIn is that once you've added a colleague as being "connected / assocaited" to yourself, you can watch updates that they make to their resume, updates they make to projects that they are currently working on, and in this case, recommendations that they are either writing for other LinkedIn users, or even recommendations that have been written for them (by other LinkedIn users).

It wasn't difficult to see that there was a flurry of recommendation letters being written for and by employees from my old stomping grounds. Occasionally someone might write a recommendation letter for someone without prompting, but this level of activity usually indicates that lay-offs are in process, a merger / acquisition is coming down, or something is panicing the work force -- such that they are all looking to get there resumes updated, and their LinkedIn network updated on their changing work status.

My friend survived the lay- ... RIF, and I'm glad. And she later told me that they get the same monologue from HR, to not share the company job changes outside of the company. But by then, LinkedIn had already let the proverbial cat out of the bag.