Looks like after intense pre and post-holiday speculations, kicked off by this Seattle PI blog post from John Cook, that Jobster is officially laying off 60 people, mainly made up of in-person sales and support staff, as of today.

With all the hullabaloo made prior to this announcement it seems fairly anti-climactic at this point.  I am curious to see how the recruiting blogosphere reacts, if at all.

I did check out Ariel Stallings’s blog who I met at the Business Blog Summit to see if she had anything posted – and of course she did.  It really sounds like, at least internally, people were prepared for today's announcement.

Having been part of a company were there were rampant rumors of lay offs and “reductions in force” on any given day, I can say that it is fairly demoralizing and difficult to concentrate on working with everyone trying to guess what might happen next.  I would imagine that some people found the official announcement a relief while others will now are facing the daunting task of beginning a new job search.

The good news is that it looks like Dave Lefkow is openly recommending and referring people for positions elsewhere.  Not many other companies would necessarily be this open.

I’m not the CEO of a start up and never have been asked to be in this position, but I don’t know if I would have been quite as transparent about the rumors regardless of how I feel about removing the corporate veil of secrecy.  Part of me feels that you should take care of your family first and deal with rumors later, though I am not privy to internal conversations that may have been taking place in conjunction with Jason’s posts about the reorganization.

What I do know is that put in a position of making business decisions, you are always faced with making decisions that don’t please everyone.  However, you can develop a level of diplomacy that allows people to feel that they understand the reasons for making the decisions and empowered rather then disenfranchised.  Again, I am not on the inside of this situation so it’s not fair for me to make judgments and conjecture over what I would have done.  The fact of the matter is when faced with making challenging choices you never know what you are going to do until you are actually in the moment.

I’ll continue to follow Jobster in light of my interest in social networking on how it has changed the face of job search and recruiting.  Many indicate that they are on the leading edge of changing the way we find jobs and I am curious to see how they will make that happen.  As well, I’m wishing those laid off today the best of luck in their next endeavors.