A template for finding your next hire or your next job

Post-layoff, the easiest way to bring new job-seekers and desperate recruiters together is a spreadsheet. A generous soul will often step up and create a Google Sheet that laid-off employees can add their names to, sparing recruiters the endless #opentowork LinkedIn scroll. But there might be a better way.

Companies like Coinbase and Robinhood now have “alumni websites” on the doc app Coda to help folks find other opportunities after sweeping layoffs.

• Kenny Mendes — head of finance, people and operations at Coda — said sometimes these sites are organically created by those who were laid-off or by the remaining workers. Other times, like in the case of Coinbase, the sites are created by the company itself to help laid-off employees land on their feet.
• Google Sheets is still the clear favorite for quickly whipping up a list and sharing it. Its dominance is apparent on Layoffs.fyi, which compiles lists of company layoffs and laid-off employees. Coda was used twice, and Airtable once.
• But Mendes thinks building crowdsourcing layoff lists in Coda dramatically improves the experience for all sides. “You’re able to go through it in a really organized fashion,” he said.

Spreadsheets can quickly get chaotic when thousands of people have edit access. Mendes said he noticed a proliferation in lists back during the 2020 wave of layoffs, but it was difficult for recruiters to sort through them.

• “It would crash, it wouldn’t load, someone would come in and re-sort it,” Mendes said. “As a result, I knew hiring managers and recruiters weren’t touching it. They would poke around, but they weren’t reaching out.”
• Mendes decided to build a talent list template in Coda and reached out to Jonathan Liebtag when Airbnb announced its layoffs in 2020. They published an “AirAlumni” list together and organized people by both speciality and location.
• He did the same when Uber had its layoffs and ended up hiring SiNing Chan, a content designer who was on the ex-Uber list and is now a solutions architect at Coda.

Earlier this year, Chan created an updated hiring list template in Coda. “I created this doc as a way to pay it forward after benefiting from a similar list that I came across when I was unexpectedly laid off in 2020,” she writes in the description.

• Coinbase found and used the template on its own, but Chan helped Robinhood and Better.com get their lists up and running. A former Better.com employee had been swamped trying to manage the list on her own, so Chan stepped in to assist.
• “It’s so cool when tools can be used for good and to help people,” Chan said. Knowledge-sharing tools, while built for practical workplace uses, are often used to connect people with necessary resources.

Layoffs and the ensuing job hunt are “soul-sucking,” as Chan put it. She’s been laid-off unexpectedly twice. Adding your name to a more convenient spreadsheet tool doesn’t make layoffs hurt any less. But Chan hopes that when people are ready to jump to the next opportunity, they find Coda’s template useful. “I just tell people to hang on and give them some tools to help them keep going,” she said.