There’s a lot of gnashing of teeth over at Cheezhead.com about Friday’s CareerBuilder layoff. According to reports by some of the nearly 100 posters to the site, the Chicago-based job board terminated about 15 percent of its 2,100 person workforce.
There’s the usual venting over who was kept, who was let go, and what company executives supposedly said about attritioning versus layoffs. However, there are also a substantial number of comments that express understanding, if not outright support, for the layoffs.
Got Let Go But Not Livid voiced a not uncommon view: “I worked at CB for years and was very shocked when I got word I was being released. I understand today had to happen, at least from what I see with the economy and company. However, I do think that if the company is hurting, everyone has to make sacrifices.”
CareerBuilder is not the only job board to reduce its workforce, but, because of its size, it is one of the most visible. Months ago Monster laid off several hundred workers and tightened its hiring, leaving a number of non-sales positions empty.
In mid-November the once high-flying Jobster laid off 15 people, about 38 percent of its staff. Jobfox laid off seven.
Jobing.com also had a layoff several weeks ago that may have involved several dozen workers nationwide. The Phoenix-based company that has actively been buying up other job boards and career services won’t discuss the layoff, except to dispute the numbers that have been bandied about on the blogs.
We haven’t heard anything specific from HotJobs, though Yahoo has been cutting staff from months. We’ve heard that HotJobs began freezing positions months ago, so the division hasn’t been hit as hard as the rest of the troubled company.
