Old: Layoffs on Friday. New: Layoffs any day with everything being Twittered

Layoffs used to happen on Friday and were very quiet affairs. The HR representative or your manager would ask you to come to their office and you would hear about the difficult situation that the company faces and why they need to let you you go. Then security would escort you out in some cases. It was a pleasant affair (I am being sarcastic). The hope would be that by firing people on Fridays, by Monday it is old news and nothing would happen. Guy Kawasaki has a good post about how to do a layoff.

Now I would venture to say that technology has proven to make elements of HR more “fun” (correct me if you think there is a better word). Fun for HR people (ways to make their job easier – ATS/HRIS, video interviews, performance management) and fun for the people affected (blogs, social networks etc to talk about it). Now there is one more element that makes layoffs REALLY FUN for everyone: Twitter.

Just how fun? How about seeing a chronicle of the last day at your company online? Ryan Kuder did just that on his last day at Yahoo. Ryan used Twitter to announce that Yahoo is laying off some very amazing people who will have no problem finding new jobs (Ryan being one of them). Twitter allows people to give updates of what they are doing and where they are to their network. Ryan took the opportunity to twitter his last day at Yahoo.

Henry Blodget of Silicon Alley Insider picked up the line and ran with it – he published Ryan’s tweet here – it is a true piece of layoff art. Congratulations to Ryan for making the front page of Techmeme and if you want to find a job in the mountains instead of Silicon Valley email me “mark at hirevue dot com” – we are hiring and I know a lot of others who are too.