A recent article in Money, discussed how Yahoo’s CEO Marissa Mayer is taking heat for her meticulous recruiting standards. This comes just weeks after she received flak for banning telecommuting when she asked all Yahoo employees to come back to the office instead of working from home, in order to foster collaboration and innovation.
Marissa Mayer is now receiving criticism for another human resource issue—hiring standards. According to the article in Money, Mayer expects recruits to have stellar grades from top-ranked schools like MIT or Stanford in order to make the cut. However, it doesn’t stop there. While most companies would like the prospective talent to have good grades and graduate from top schools, the problem, critics say, is that Mayer’s methods are causing the company to miss out on talented prospects.
Silicon Valley has a very competitive labor market, so if Yahoo doesn’t hire someone, Google probably will. The problem critics see with Mayer’s hiring is that she personally interviews every potential new recruit, which, in turn, slows down the process. For some recruits, they wait over eight weeks to hear back, ultimately accepting job offers from other companies in the meantime.
Brad Garlinghouse, a former Yahoo executive, said, “Focusing on academic credentials doesn’t always lead to the best hires.” Reuters reports that Mayer was asked at a staff meeting whether she is using overly high standards for hiring, and she responded with a line from the movie “Say Anything,” asking, “Why can’t we just be good at hiring?”
Call the Posey Law Firm at 888.269.1962 or 512-646-0828 to get your employment questions answered.