Reference no: EM132303730

After all this came down, a person close to the company said that, “In the absence of evidence that Mr. Thompson actively misled Yahoo! about his résumé, Yahoo!’s directors likely won’t force him out. Maintaining him as CEO of Yahoo! at this time is more important than whether he had a computer science degree or not.” And at first, that was the stance Yahoo!’s board took. However, the controversy continued to grow. In a meeting with senior Yahoo! officials, Thompson said he “regretted not finding an error in his public biography.” He then suggested that maybe an executive search firm might have inserted this information more than seven years earlier. Yet, this blame game backfired. Some of his comments ended up on tech blogs, which angered the search firm, which produced documents from Mr. Thompson showing his inaccurate biography. As one person close to the situation said, “The cover-up became worse than the crime.” Not long after, Thompson ended up resigning his position. Although the board did not give him severance pay, he did get to keep $7 million of the cash and stock he received when appointed to the position. Not a bad haul for only four months’ work. What can future applicants learn from this story (a) personally and (b) professionally?