Nonprofit HR’s Blog

It did not take long for the coverage of the hiring of Marissa Mayer by Yahoo! as their CEO to get off track and way from its strategic aspects. Take a look at this headline, “Marissa Mayer: The First Ever Pregnant CEO Of A Fortune 500 Tech Company?“

Really? This is your headline? Such things make the tech industry and its media look a bit immature.

The news of this hiring is the talent grab by Yahoo! from Google. Mayer was one of the first 20 employees at Google. I think that defines her loosely as a founder. But no, we are going to cover her sex and female condition. There is even very little coverage of her age. Mayer is 37 and now the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. It is not quite Mark Zuckerberg territory, but deserves some reflection.

The importance of Mayer’s hiring for this blog is that she is a talent guru. She believes in people power not product power. Yes, she is an engineer and a geek, but publically she constantly pushes culture and talent as the main strengths of an organization. In my opinion, as an HR observer, this is the best way forward for Yahoo!. She is not a corporate raider who is going to come in and reposition a stock price through layoffs and acquisitions. She’s going to hire more superstars, like herself, and let them steer the slumping Internet company towards a winning path.

And at least initially, she will be doing it while pregnant.