June 20, 2009
Uncategorized

Yahoo’s Got a Unique Hiring Strategy

It’s Friday, it’s late in the day on the east coast and Yahoo is making my head hurt a bit.

It’s looking to hire, but it’s not accepting resumes. A unique talent acquisition strategy to say the least.

Why? Well, because it seems the search titan, which is dealing with internal organizational issues and faces more than an uphill battle against Google, can’t seem to get out of its own way.

Yahoo posted internal jobs this week, but prospective job seekers had to be more than a bit stunned to click through to find this response today:

 

Hold that thought!

Sorry, our site is temporarily unavailable — we’re busy upgrading our system. Our plan is to be back up and running on Monday, June 15, so please check back then.

Don’t let that stop you from thinking about becoming a Yahoo. Check back soon to search and apply for your next big opportunity. If you have questions or need a little extra help during this time, please contact us.

So when alerted to this, I did the right thing. I emailed Yahoo, just to find out if it was a hoax or a hack. And I got a response pretty fast, which was cool, right?:

Thank you for your email, we appreciate you taking the time to submit you [sic] inquiry. Our system [sic] are currently offline as we are going through an upgrade of our systems. As the website [sic] stated all systems should be available again starting Monday June 15th,[sic] please come back then, and you will be able to access our openings.

Best Regards,

Yahoo! Talent Acquisition

The response was very surprising. First off, no one copy edited the public note.
Even if you discount the errors, the note itself indicates the career job site issue explanation was thrown up with little thought or insight. Or a spell checker.
So does that beg the question: When is a technology company not a technology company?
Am I being a beotch, as my 16-year-old would say? Or does it illustrate Yahoo is so busy trying to win the battle against Google, and now Microsoft’s Bing, that it’s willing to blow off innovative job seekers who could help turn the company into better times?
Seriously though, what talented professional isn’t going to think twice about applying to today’s, or future, “opportunities” at Yahoo given the fact it’s going to take the technology company three days to get its job/career portal up and working?