All told, Detroit companies and their suppliers have announced plans to eliminate 98,000 jobs, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the outplacement company.

Carbide dealt with such dislocations in the most humane fashion by retaining an outplacement company to help their employees find new jobs.

Martin, based in Richmond, Va., is working with an outplacement company to help find jobs for those being laid off.

Lee Hecht Harrison, another outplacement company, estimates the networking number to be over 80 percent.

The corporations engaged in this downsizing turned increasingly to outplacement companies to get their former workers placed in new jobs as quickly as possible.

Her husband, a senior vice president of an outplacement company, was less enthusiastic, she said, though her own children thought they were neat.

Another outplacement company, Lee Hecht Harrison, put the networking number around 80 percent.

Her father is a vice president at Beam Pines, an outplacement company in Farmington, Conn.

John Challenger, chief executive of Challenger Gray & Christmas, the outplacement company, concurs.

Sathe and his team believed that traditional outplacement companies did not place primary focus on the most critical issue - securing a new job for the individual in transition.