They can build one, however.
Joel Franusic, 26, was laid off in January from his systems job at PBwiki, a company in San Mateo, Calif., that creates collaborative websites known as wikis. "As I was sitting in the office at PBwiki after I got all the news, I was thinking, 'I should Twitter this,' " he said. "Then I thought, 'No, people would just feel bad for me."
The San Francisco resident waited a few hours to consider the best approach, then posted his resume and a message on Twitter and Facebook: "Laid off from PBwiki and looking for my next adventure!"
An hour later, he had a lead on a job. An hour after that, he had an interview scheduled. Within two days, he had an offer from the first company, NetBooks Inc., a San Francisco start-up that makes online accounting software for small businesses. He took the job.
LinkedIn, based in Mountain View, Calif., seems to have a story about how its network reflects the economic agitation almost anywhere you can think of. Detroit, home of the struggling auto industry, has been the site's fastest-growing region for networkers, said Kay Luo, LinkedIn's senior director of communication. And when Wall Street powerhouse Lehman Bros. fell apart last autumn, the browsing of people on its network tripled.
"In other recessionary times, we have seen people lean on education and go back to school," Hahn said. "This is the first major recession where you have a tool like LinkedIn and can use your professional network more effectively."
Sometimes there aren't jobs to be found.
Kevin Kimball of Los Altos, Calif., was laid off in August from Hitachi Global Storage Technologies Inc. He built a profile and began cultivating a network. Though he hasn't yet landed someplace, he says his ability to research employers has given him a foot in the door for interviews.
Among the LinkedIn features he favors are ones that let him figure out who has looked at his profile and see by how many degrees he's separated from the hiring manager of a place he's targeted (or anyone else with a profile on the site).
"Typically, you'll go to a website, post your resume and cover letter, and you're one of many, many, many," he said. "It's like going into a black hole. You want to get someone in the company to give you some internal gravitational pull."
Companies and recruiters like LinkedIn for that reason as well. Salesforce.com Inc., a San Francisco firm that makes on-demand software for business, uses it extensively and reports that 98% of its 3,500 worldwide employees have LinkedIn profiles.
