LinkedIn,

You have been with us since before Facebook and even MySpace I believe. You are on www.linkedin.com and are a trusted source for professional friends to reconnect and for people to network with new colleagues. Your tabs are simple and straightforward. Your layout is plain and clean. You can go to the site and find exactly what you are looking for, just like you have been for years. I heard the news on Techcrunch and immediately proceeded to see if what was said is true.

So why are you trying to keep up with the kids? Is it a mid-life crisis Linkedin? Since you are a website and cannot buy a new corvette (I’m sure Mr. Hoffman could spring for a new top of line blade server though) do you have to change your look and feel so that there is no differentiation between you and Facebook? Is it the flip flops you want? The Google programmers? What?

I don’t come to you looking for games and drunken party photos. I come to you for professionalism and opportunities to grow my reputation. You have helped me build HireVue and our video interview system immensely over the years through referrals and leads and I hate to see you let yourself go like this. Mid-life crises are not good – they generally do not turn out well as we all know. What can we do to bring you back?

Please let us know LinkedIn. You are a true friend and always there for us when we need you. Now we want to be there for you.

Sincerely

Mark Newman and the HireVue team

Layoffs used to happen on Friday and were very quiet affairs. The HR representative or your manager would ask you to come to their office and you would hear about the difficult situation that the company faces and why they need to let you you go. Then security would escort you out in some cases. It was a pleasant affair (I am being sarcastic). The hope would be that by firing people on Fridays, by Monday it is old news and nothing would happen. Guy Kawasaki has a good post about how to do a layoff.

Now I would venture to say that technology has proven to make elements of HR more “fun” (correct me if you think there is a better word). Fun for HR people (ways to make their job easier – ATS/HRIS, video interviews, performance management) and fun for the people affected (blogs, social networks etc to talk about it). Now there is one more element that makes layoffs REALLY FUN for everyone: Twitter.

Just how fun? How about seeing a chronicle of the last day at your company online? Ryan Kuder did just that on his last day at Yahoo. Ryan used Twitter to announce that Yahoo is laying off some very amazing people who will have no problem finding new jobs (Ryan being one of them). Twitter allows people to give updates of what they are doing and where they are to their network. Ryan took the opportunity to twitter his last day at Yahoo.

Henry Blodget of Silicon Alley Insider picked up the line and ran with it – he published Ryan’s tweet here – it is a true piece of layoff art. Congratulations to Ryan for making the front page of Techmeme and if you want to find a job in the mountains instead of Silicon Valley email me “mark at hirevue dot com” – we are hiring and I know a lot of others who are too.