Will Boylan Yahoo? - Departures - Dimitri Boylan's future following Yahoo! Inc.s' acquisition of HotJobs.com Ltd - Brief Article

Chief Executive, The, April, 2002 by Sonja Sherwood

WITH THE DOT-COM shakeout in full gear, CEOs of acquired companies need to keep their options open.

This is especially true if the buyer is Yahoo!, which in January acquired online job board company HotJobs for $436 million. If Yahoo!'s reputation is to be believed, HotJobs' CEO Dimitri Boylan, a former executive recruiter who has helped make HotJobs one of the Internet's most recognized job sites, may want to post his resume.

"Yahoo!'s history has been that they take over a company and they run it [themselves]," says John Corcoran, an Internet and digital-media analyst for New York-based CIBC World Markets. "Typically, senior managers of the acquired company have been either marginalized, or they've left."

Boylan indicated in December that HotJob's management team would remain with Yahoo!, but has since been restricted from further comment.

Top executives of Broadcast.com and GeoCities left Yahoo! soon after acquisition in 1999. Executives of other acquired companies have historically been given tasks resembling their former jobs, according to a spokesman for Yahoo!, who says the company hasn't yet determined what role Boylan will play at the company.

This time around, however, Terry Semel is running the show. HotJobs is the first "acquisition of consequence" since Tim Koogle's departure, says Corcoran. "Does that change the game?" he wonders. "It might. I think they're trying to do things differently."