This was the weekend.

Thousands of PeopleSoft employees—along with some Oracle employees—were due to get pink slips at home over the weekend, the natural consequence of a takeover. I’m waiting to hear if any of the folks I know at PeopleSoft have been affected. Some of them have been LinkedIn members for a while, an affiliation that may pay dividends as they use the professional-focused social network to find new employment.

That makes such sense that over 3,700 PeopleSofties have joined LinkedIn in the last 30 days, according to Joi Ito. That brings the total number of PeopleSofties with LinkedIn accounts to about 5,500.

As the story of the PeopleSoft explosion at LinkedIn has spread among the blogs, many bloggers from technology companies have reported openings at their own companies, according to an article in New Zealand’s National Business Review. An example: Ross Mayfield runs SocialText, one of the companies marketing a business-focused wiki product. In his blog, Mayfield cites Ito’s post, then writes, “Socialtext is looking for good people, I might add.  Engineers, designers, sales and customer support. Just contact me through LinkedIn.”

This convergence of blogs (reporting on job availability) and social networking (as the means for job-seekers to find job-holders) may be a first, but it certainly seems a natural evolution of the network. How many companies seeking to hire just the kid of people PeopleSoft is losing are relying on traditional recruiting techniques? How many will wish they had a blog and a LInkedIn membership when those employees get snatched up?