Would Yahoo's Marissa Mayer hire you?

Just weeks after sparking a furious debate by banning telecommuting, Yahoo (YHOO) Chief Executive Marissa Mayer is catching flak for another human resources issue. 

The problem, critics say, is that Mayer's rigorous hiring standards are causing the company to miss out on talented prospects in Silicon Valley's uber-competitive labor market. 

She was asked at a recent staff meeting if she's using overly high standards for hiring, Reuters reports. Mayer countered with an argument that cited a line from 1989's "Say Anything," asking, "Why can't we just be good at hiring?" 

Mayer personally interviews every potential new recruit, which critics say hampers the company's ability to fill open positions by slowing down the process. One would-be employee waited for eight weeks to hear back and eventually accepted an offer from another company, Reuters notes. 

Yahoo's dilemma is whether it can afford to have such strict standards, given it's racing to remain relevant in an industry dominated by Google (GOOG). Complicating the issue is that Yahoo is still considered a "back-up" option among many of the engineers and scientists it would like to hire, Rick Girard at Stride Professional Search told Reuters.

Yahoo currently has 900 jobs open, or about 8% of its workforce. By comparison, Mayer's former employer, Google, has 1,000 open jobs, but that's only 2% of its employee base. 

Mayer is taking a page from Google by insisting new hires have some cred backing them up: Stellar grades from top-ranked schools like MIT or Stanford are essential, the story says. 

But great, creative employees and entrepreneurs often come from unlikely places. Take Michael Dell, the founder of Dell (DELL) who dropped out of the University of Texas, or Apple (AAPL) co-founder Steve Jobs, who dropped out of the counterculture-orien​ted Reed College. 

Mayer is also putting pressure on existing staff. Some administrative assistants were recently told they had to take a version of the law school admissions test, although it wasn't clear why, Reuters notes. The company later rescinded the requirement. 

Focusing on academic credentials doesn't always lead to the best hires, said Brad Garlinghouse, a former Yahoo executive known for writing a 2006 memo that criticized the company's lack of vision. 

He told Reuters: "Some of the best people I've ever worked with didn't necessarily get the best GPA or go to Stanford."

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