Archives for Social Media

Groucho Marx once famously informed a group of his show business contemporaries that “I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member.”

That’s a sentiment a curmudgeon could love. But the simple truth is that, when you need it, a support group serves a useful purpose. Unemployed workers and job seekers have career clubs, Internet forums or social media sites that provide advice, mentoring and other forms of encouragement.

So why does layoffspace.com seem like a bit of a stretch to me? It’s a social media site primarily for the unemployed. That’s a novel concept, although arguably there are more underemployed workers than unemployed ones. At 4.5% unemployment, it’s a niche idea, certainly. But is it also a timely one?

No doubt, there’s something to be said about owning up to a negative experience. Losing a job can involve a grieving period. Unemployed workers may want to network with one another, but my hunch is that they would prefer to meet recruiters, hiring managers and people working in their chosen profession.

You have to put the past behind you, right?

By contrast, on Linked-in, home to millions of passive and active job seekers, recruiters can generally sniff out who is available even if it’s not always apparent to the rest of us. Job seekers can also choose to have job listings made available to them. (Speaking of which, here are some cool tips about maximizing your Linked-in profile, courtesy of recruiter Dave Mendoza.)

I leave you with some parting wisdom from the layoffspace.com blog: “We all have daydreams about what we’d do if we won the lottery, how we’d spend our days if we didn’t have to work for a living. But the reality is that most of us do have to work.” Yes, we do.