OCTOBER 18, 2000
EXECUTIVE MEMO
Outplacement Services -- Defunct Dot-Com Style | How some out-of-business Net companies try to help their laid-off workers
| Two dot-coms that went kaput in recent weeks are helping former employees find new gigs by putting their resumes online. Kibu.com, a Web site targeted at teen girls, launched kibupeople.com just days after it shut down operations earlier this month, says Chief Executive Judy MacDonald. Many of
Kibu's 70 ex-staffers have posted their resumes on the site, which is accessible to all.
The idea for the virtual outplacement service was MacDonald's. She had done something similar when she was chief executive of PrintPaks, a Portland (Ore.)-based publisher of multimedia craft products that she co-founded. Mattel bought PrintPaks in 1998, then dissolved the subsidiary last year.
SEVERANCE PLUS. When Mattel's decision was announced, MacDonald and her sister Jean created PrintPaksPeople.com so that pink-slipped employees could post their credentials online. "We knew everyone in the community was wondering: 'What are all these people going to do?'" MacDonald says. "I think every company who lays off people should do this."
While it's unclear how many of PrintPaks 30 staffers got jobs because of the site, kibupeople.com is already attracting attention. On its first day up, MacDonald says the site garnered 55,000 unique visits. Not bad, considering that MacDonald estimates that the site cost less than $500 to launch. Formal outplacement services, by contrast, can run into the thousands of dollars, depending on the organization's size and the type of career counseling provided.
DeepCanyon.com is another defunct dot-com that's trying to use the Web to help former employees. Roughly 30 staffers at this startup, which sold market research from various sources over the Net, celebrated what they called Shutdown Day on Oct. 5 by posing for a group picture on a street near their Seattle offices. That shot, with nary a grim face in the crowd, now greets visitors
to FormerlyDeepCanyon.com, a site overseen by the company's former director of program management, Glenn Brooks.
The headline above the picture reads in part: "DeepCanyon has closed its doors, and we are on the street. Want to hire a Web-savvy employee or a whole team?" So far, a handful of staffers, including a marketing director and a Web software engineer, have added their resumes to the page. The company, which was spun off from Hewlett-Packard earlier this year, folded after failing to obtain a second round of funding.
PRIVACY CONCERNS. Setting up resume repositories online may be a nice, inexpensive gesture to help former staffers stay off the unemployment line. But if you're an employer, be careful about how much of their information you reveal. Most of the resumes at kibupeople.com and FormerlyDeepCanyon.com include the person's home address and phone number. While you want to make it easy for recruiters to find good people, you don't want to put anyone's privacy or safety in jeopardy. The best solution: Include e-mail addresses only.
By Jennifer Gill in New York
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Copyright 2000 , by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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