LinkedIn: a timely resource for 5,000 ex-PeopleSoft employees

CNET News.com just confirmed the "rumor":

Oracle dropped the ax Friday, announcing plans to lay off 5,000 workers in its effort to squeeze costs out of its $10.3 billion software merger with PeopleSoft.

This is very sad for all people who will be impacted by this massive "rif" (reduction in force in startup speak), and we can only hope for them that they will find opportunities quickly. Best of luck to all of them.

I can only assume that Jeff Nolan, a partner with SAP Ventures, is going to be inundated by emails after posting yesterday that his portfolio companies are seeking talents that typical PeopleSoft ex-employees might have. And so will Brad Feld. On the startup side, Ross mentions opportunities at SocialText.

I would imagine that many in the 11,000-strong PeopleSoft workforce have been busy updating and posting their resumes, bios, blogs and have hit the road to participate to networking events.

Just as a data point: in my (reasonably large) LinkedIn network, I have access to 4,726 current PeopleSoft employees. Since I know that I can reach about 80% of all LinkedIn members, I guess that about 5,500 PeopleSoft employees must be in the database - that's 50% of the company (!!!). Not surprising that they have created a LinkedIn Group for the PeopleSoft Alumni Network.

Hmm, let's now look at how many have joined recently: 3,756 (of the 4,726) have joined in the last 3 months, 3,189 in the last month, 1,617 in the last two weeks and 951 in the last week. Which means that LinkedIn must have seen a massive spike in PeopleSoft registrations since Dec 13th (the day Oracle's "victory" was confirmed).

It has been a common question in the press as to LinkedIn's value and business model. Well, sounds like employers interested in attracting PeopleSoft talents should get busy on the site... or better post their job offers on LinkedIn. Being to post jobs directly on LinkedIn ? WTF ?

Well, here is the tip of the day: based on some emails that a few LinkedIn members have received yesterday, a preview of LinkedIn Jobs should be available on... Monday Sunday.

I hope that this will generate a few success stories involving ex-PeopleSoft employees, and that we'll see appearing on the site like this one (or this one - shameless self promotion).

Private Message: Sorry Jean-Luc, but you might have to put some more servers up over the week-end :-).

Disclosure: I am not affiliated with LinkedIn, but as I mentioned in my previous post about the company, I have been a big fan for a while, and quite a few of my friends are involved in the company as executives or investors.

Update: Joi seems to have noticed as well, thanks to Chiara's post.