YAHOO!

A NEW HR
CHALLENGE
Group 5

CONTENTS
About Yahoo!
Facts about the case
Strategies at Yahoo!
Yahoo!s Structure and culture
Problems due to dot-com burst
HR Department at Yahoo!
Solution

ABOUT YAHOO!
1994: A Web guide created by Jerry Yang and David Filo
Originally called Jerrys Guide to the World Wide Web.
Renamed to Yahoo!(Yet Another Highly Officious Oracle).
1995: Hired Tim TK Cook as a CEO.
1996: Spent heavily on TV commercials to reach the
mass market. Launched a campaign Do you Yahoo!?.
Yahoo! Japan launched.
1996-2001: Grew from 25 employees at its IPO to 3510
employees.
2001: Hired Libby Sartain as new chief of people and SVP
of Human resources.

FACTS ABOUT THE CASE

Expanded variety of services through partnerships,
internal development and acquisitions.
Yahoo! over-relied on advertising revenue.
Dot com boom Impacted HR practices
Dot com burst reduced advertising revenue

STRATEGIES AT YAHOO!
Product Strategy: Fundamental goal was to keep
services free.
Branding Strategy: Spent heavily on TV
advertisements to reach the masses.
Service Platform Strategy: Functionality was
obtained through partnerships, internal
development and acquisitions.

YAHOO! STRUCTURE &

CULTURE
Consisted of two groups :
Property Development and Marketing & Sales.
It consisted primarily of engineers.
Always considered to be a fun place to work
Collaborative environment where quality of idea
mattered more than the position or title.
Entrepreneurial , Innovative behavior was a norm.
Hard work , fast pace and long hours persisted at
Yahoo!

PROBLEMS CAUSED DUE TO

DOT COM BURST

Stock
prices has
plummeted
86%

Revenues
dropped

First ever
Several top layoff was
executives announced
resigned.
at the
company

Credibility
of the firm
of affected

HUMAN RESOURCE
DEPARTMENT AT
In 2001, The HR department consisted of only 50 people.
Position of director and benefits was unfilled.
HR lacked a common vision or strategy in its approach to
staffing and development.
Standard metrics didnt exit.
On demand recruitment. No rigorous or systematic hiring
procedure.
Lacked a recruiting strategy. It consisted of only posting
jobs and circulating resumes.
Interviews were conducted according to the particular
habits of the interviewer.

CONTINUED
Resources of the company were not viewed as the
contributing factor to the Brand strength.
Employees did not knew the HR staff well enough.
No central database of skills and competencies in
the workforce.
On boarding process was only of 1 day.
Managers considered the process(about Yahoo!s
business model) as non essential and encouraged
employees to skip it.
Average length of services only 2.2 years.
No established Learning and development function.

PRIORITY ORDER FOR

SARTAIN (SOLUTION)
1. Do away the anxiety and fears of the employees of the company
2. Synchronise the HR Strategy with the future strategy of the new
CEO. With new business models, organisation structure will
become more complex.
3. Design common strategy and approach to hire people
4. Distinguish its HR practices from other companies in the same
domain so as to acquire and retain the best talent in the
industry.
5. Enlarge the role of HR in the organisation such that every
employee is familiar with the HR.
6. Design a proper training program for the new employees in the
company which also tells about how Yahoos business is
operated apart from basic administrative details.

FOCUS TO CREATE LONG

TERM IMPACT
The main focus of the HR should be on designing
proper strategy to hire people, employee training and
employee engagement to create a long term impact
on Yahoo.
GENERAL SUGGESTIONS :
There should be proper co-ordination between the
CEO and the HR head as to what the strategies the
new CEO is going to bring so that HR can plan
accordingly.
The challenge is to maintain the informal culture by
integrating formal mechanisms into it.