A Portal Into Yahoo!

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 business development roles are also great for MBAs coming out of school. We have corporate development, corporate strategy roles, and our finance function is one that is beginning to get even more involved.

What are you trying to glean about a candidate from an interview?
If someone makes it to the second round, we know they're smart. It's not a matter of evaluating intellect. Instead, there's a level of functional expertise that we need to screen for, as well as a cultural fit.

Do you value technical skills in MBAs?
The average age here is about 32. It's a pretty youthful organization, and much of the technology that we work with is very recent. We absolutely value technical skills. In some areas, an MBA with an engineering undergrad is a great complementary skill set. In our internship program, we encourage our MBA hires to spend time with engineers to understand that not only can they get along but they can create powerful partnerships in the company.

How big is your internship program?
In the past two years, we've tripled the scale of our internship program. We don't even set a specific number target, because when we hire interns, we believe we're hiring the best talent out there. We believe we'll be able to convert everyone who is a natural fit into a full-time position. That said, last year we hired in the range of 200, and that includes engineering interns.

What's it like working at Yahoo?
We have a cluster of buildings at our main campus in Sunnyvale. We also have other buildings outside of this core campus. Is it big? Yes. Does it feel big? Not to me.

Part of the appeal of Yahoo is that we continue to have the energy and vibrancy of a small company, even though we have become a larger company. We have about 4,000 people working at headquarters. We're often compared to a college campus because there's a bunch of people roaming around in jeans, wearing backpacks with laptops in them.

What's the culture like?
We're known for being an extremely casual environment with all kinds of fun perks. We have valet parking, onsite masseuse, oil change, haircuts, and dentist. We have sand volleyball courts, basketball, bocce ball. It's just an amazing campus to work on.

At the same time, it is a competitive environment. But it's not competitive in the sense that anyone's trying to do better than anyone else. We're collectively trying to win and do great things. And we're obviously in an extremely competitive industry, too, so getting products and services to market quickly is important.

It's a pretty intense environment. But it's full of people who are smiling and dressed casually. It's quite a nice juxtaposition.

Is there a typical MBA career path at Yahoo?
If you look at the breadth of products that we make and build, there are many different vertical industries that we're in. You can have a career at Yahoo that crosses so many different properties that it is unmatched by any other company.

So one of the great things about a candidate who would want to come here is if he or she has a particular area of expertise. Your field of expertise is a great starting point. If you want to go into a different part of the business later on, you can.

Are there any specific things on a candidate's résumé that jump out at you in a good or bad way?
The more different and complementary experiences a candidate has, the more specific we can get in terms of where he or she might fit in.

We look for talent that can deliver. Don't just tell me that you went to a premier university. Tell me what you did while you were there. Tell me how you made a difference while you were there. Talk to me about how you were innovative while you were there, and how passionate you were about the things in which you were involved.

Is there anything that MBA graduates need to improve?
MBAs need to have a greater appreciation for roles outside of the one that they do. They need to have a greater understanding of the connections between our work, and they need to know how to form a cross-functional, cross-boundary team to create a reality that wouldn't happen otherwise.