Human Resources Current Event

In an August 10, 2012 article for AllThingD.com, Kara Swisher explores how Marissa Mayer, the new CEO of Yahoo, plans on playing an active role in the company’s human resource activity going forward.

The company has suffered a recent brain drain of quality employees in addition to instituting a series of company wide layoffs. Mayer, a former executive at Google, will likely institute new hiring practices that will closely resemble Google’s. Mayer has already taken on the responsibility of reviewing all new hires personally and expects that new hires going forward are graduating with solid grade point averages from higher-level educational institutions.

Swisher goes on to mention that this sudden, guerilla approach to hiring by the CEO is likely due to the ineffectiveness of the current head of human resources for Yahoo, David Windley. “Windley has been at Yahoo through a long series of CEO musical chairs and has been criticized internally for the talent loss and also its series of layoffs at Yahoo” (Swisher, para. 9).

This article delves into how important maintaining and acquiring talent is to the sustainability of any company. If a company cannot secure that talent then there is a strong likelihood that this company will experience a brain drain, similar to Yahoo’s. Other company’s will identify the potential of exceptional employees or prospects and offer better deals in exchange for their services. Further, if a company is complacent with their hiring practices and settles for hiring average prospects then they will likely be unable to compete, in terms of talent and ideas, with competitors in the market. This example is unique in the sense that the CEO did not believe in the current practices of the company’s human resources department and took it upon herself to resolve the problem. This is a testament to how vital hiring and maintaining talent is to any company’s human resources department.

Mayer’s approach is extreme but given the current state of...