If MBAs who want to land a job at Internet powerhouse Yahoo! (
YHOO
) don't have technical skills, they need to have an appreciation for those who do, says Grant Bassett, director of Yahoo's talent acquisition programs. At the company's 4,000-person "campus" in Sunnyvale, Calif., the culture is informal -- jeans and backpacks are the norm -- but competitive. The campus includes things like a gym and a place to get your oil changed. Bassett says MBAs who want to work for Yahoo need to fit in with the company's unique culture.
Bassett has been at Yahoo for four years, and he has been running the university relations and intern program for the last two. He's based at headquarters and has been working in Silicon Valley since 1993. Before Yahoo, Bassett worked at Silicon Graphics (
SGID
), a tech company based in Mountain View, Calif. He holds an MBA from Baylor University
Hankamer School of Business.
He recently spoke with BusinessWeek Online reporter
Jeffrey Gangemi. Edited excerpts of their conversation follow:
Do you have a group of schools you target for MBA recruiting?
We look at schools to provide an education that culturally fits with our company. The University of California at
Berkeley's Haas School of Business,
Stanford Graduate School of Business, and UCLA's
Anderson School of Management develop students who are team-oriented and understand how business and tech blend together.
We also do formal recruiting at
Harvard Business School,
Columbia Business School,
Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management, and Northwestern University
Kellogg School of Management.
How and when does the recruiting process start?
We are visible on several campuses in the fall, and we try to showcase some real-world projects to give students a sense of the types of projects we're working on. It's not the standard information session. Schools report to us that the attendance at our information sessions is usually two or three times what it is for any other company.
For what types of positions are you usually hiring?
Product management and marketing are the most common, but...
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