Employees being let go will receive outplacement counseling and other assistance, the agency said.

We are offering those employees who are impacted outplacement counseling services"

But as more women reach senior management posts, where outplacement counseling is a company-paid benefit, that is changing.

"We were escorted into meetings, told we would get some outplacement counseling and that we had a week to clean out our offices."

Outplacement counseling began as a perk for dismissed senior executives; it is now offered to middle management and lower-ranking employees, as well.

The benefits that accrue to companies that pay for outplacement counseling are practical as well as altruistic.

Andrew Sherwood of Goodrich & Sherwood, a management recruiting and outplacement counseling firm, stresses the importance of meeting employees' needs.

Another common merger perquisite for top executives is the continuation of medical and life insurance benefits and allowances for financial counseling and outplacement counseling.

Many people with technical and professional expertise do not receive outplacement counseling when they lose their jobs, and 40Plus chapters have helped to fill that gap for many individuals.

To address these issues, Emily Koltnow has formed W.I.N. - Women in Networking - an outplacement counseling program for women.

Dr. Pickman, 42, is also the senior outplacement counselor at Chemical Bank and an instructor in outplacement counseling at New York University.

The American Electronics Association, for example, wrote, "By requiring outplacement counseling to be treated as taxable income, the I.R.S. is kicking terminated employees while they are down."

She said that dismissed lawyers would have the use of offices at an outplacement counseling firm and that the company was paying most lawyers six months severance pay, or twice what contracts called for.

Mr. Lee of Lee Hecht Harrison acknowledged that "outplacement counseling was designed by and for men - it needs to be rethought when women become 25 percent of the client population."

Mr. Monahan is now a senior vice president at Michael Simon Associates in Mount Kisco, a concern that provides preretirement and outplacement counseling services to employees of area corporations.

Many have not been provided with outplacement counseling services at their former employer's expense, and it is questionable if outplacement can meet the needs of many of the excutive/management clients who are 50 and older.

And worldwide industry revenues should be about $1 billion this year, according to the Association of Outplacement Counseling Firms International, a trade group in Washington whose 70 members do about three quarters of the business.

His father, a former defensive back for the Chicago Bears, was Fordham's football coach until 1993 and now is the vice president of the John Joseph Group, an outplacement counseling company in Stratford, Conn.

Yet when Ciba embarked on a downsizing program after its merger with Sandoz Corporation, Mr. Salvatore decided to forgo outplacement counseling in favor of a program in entrepreneurship that Ciba was also offering employees.