Social networking site targets those with, without jobs

Brian Norgard, who founded blog aggregation website Newroo and later sold it to News Corp., is working with Web developers in Los Angeles on a new project called Namesake.

It’s a social networking site for helping people find jobs, staying connected with colleagues and, for those with jobs, organizing projects with co-workers.

Namesake isn’t taking sign-ups yet, but Norgard hopes to begin inviting users in the next couple of weeks. The Times was shown an early version of the site, and features such as the update stream and profiles look more like Facebook than LinkedIn.

The tools for staying in touch with people in a particular industry may appeal to those who are already employed, but the job-finding features will interest the 2.3 million California adults who are unemployed. Pretty fortunate timing for Norgard, since the state’s unemployment rate has risen to 12.4%.

Namesake is just one start-up looking to capitalize on the growing number of people who are low on money but have more time to network and search for jobs online. Some are targeting niches — Namesake’s is “creative people.”

Koda Inc., based in San Francisco, lists openings for entry-level jobs, defined as those for people with less than five years of experience.

Unemployment is high, but the number of jobs being posted online is also on the rise. Monster, which measures listings on its own site as well as those on others’, reports a 21% increase in jobs being listed online in July versus a year ago. CareerBuilder saw an 18% increase in June. Indeed.com, another job site, says listings increased in 11 of the 12 industries studied in its report.

So jobs are out there. But Koda Chief Executive Jeff Berger says only a sliver of those are available to recent college graduates, who are not experienced and are entering one of the worst job markets in decades.

“Ultimately, a lot of the companies we talk to “only have a few jobs available to this demographic,” he said.

New York-based Jobulous is also paying special attention to recent grads. Like Namesake, the site combines social networking elements with job-seeking. Jobulous CEO Ross Siegel started the company shortly after getting laid off in the spring of 2008.

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