Late last year I applied for a job at Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO). It was a job that had my name written all over it. The company was looking for a person to help revamp its kids' portal, Yahooligans. It wanted someone with both editorial and web experience who also had insights into kids aged 7-14.

I applied. Besides being a long-time journalist for major media like the Los Angeles Times and BusinessWeek magazine, I had spent the last 10 years writing about kids for the likes of Parenting Magazine and American Baby. I'd worked for several years on different websites during the dot.com boom in San Francisco, including Babycenter.com, and felt I was web-savvy enough to contribute to a larger concern like Yahoo! As a special bonus, I also had two kids in that age group, and so had personal insights into what makes that particular demographic salivate. I could recite the Cartoon Network lineup like a pro, and opine about such ten-year-old interests as Ben Ten, Teen Titans, Yugi-Oh and every Pixar movie made in the last ten years.

Call me crazy, but I thought I was the perfect gal for the gig.And Yahoo! thought so, too, apparently. I was called into the company's sleek Santa Monica offices for a first, then a second interview. Early on I learned I had vastly more actual editorial experience than either of the two women I'd be working for, plus the kid thing, which gave me a street cred for a youth portal that none of their other applicants had. I took an editing test that seemed elementary, and gave them a laundry list of ideas I had to make the site relevant and exciting, a "must-go-to" online destination for kids. They seemed impressed. Also in a hurry. The new site was going live for beta in two weeks. Was I available to start ASAP?

I was excited. My opinion of Yahoo! had been formed in the mid-to-late '90s, when Yahoo! was hot and thought of as cutting edge. Of course, I didn't use Yahoo anymore. I was a Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) Gal (along with everyone else). So when I Googled Yahoo!, I was surprised to learn that its fortunes had changed, and it was now seen as more a struggling also-ran instead of an industry leader. Indeed, the Yahooligan's site I was applying to revamp seemed exceedingly static and dull. Very 1995. No matter. We'd fix it, I thought. We'd make it a vibrant, kid-safe destination, with some social networking thrown in and buckets of sponsored content and kid-media tie-ins.

But at my third interview, things started breaking down. The man in charge of media, my ultimate boss, kept having to push back our meeting due to other, more pressing business. Another honcho alluded to possible department shakeups. How did I feel about a job in another area? I went home from that long afternoon scratching my head.

Then I didn't hear another thing. When I nudged, the woman who'd had me in, she told me her bosses were rethinking the job description, and thinking that maybe they didn't want a content specialist. What did they want, I asked? They didn't know yet, she said. A few weeks later, she emailed to say the hiring had been postponed indefinitely, until they could define what it was the company really wanted.

Was it something I said? Perhaps I just didn't make the final cut, but why the tortured explanation? God forbid the company was actually this disorganized. Why not just send me a form letter?

I left the experience with a new opinion of Yahoo!: That of an unwieldy, disorganized company scrambling to catch up to Google and others competitors but completely unsure of how to do so.

Sour grapes? Not really. I have a good gig with my freelance writing and, of course, the fine folks here at AOL's BloggingStocks. Plus I don't have to commute to Santa Monica, either. But I can't say I was surprised to hear of Monday's executive shake-up either. Good luck, Yahoos. You're gonna need it.

Other BloggingStocks coverage:
Brian White: Even with Semel out, Yahoo! still can't catch Google
Georges Yared: Google is the reason Terry Semel just couldn't win
Peter Cohan: What took so long -- and, with YHOO up sharply since announcement, will Jerry Yang sell?
Gary Sattler: Was Terry Semel really that bad? Ummm, yes.
Melly Alazraki: Webcast uninspiring; I was hoping for new talent from the outside.
Jonathan Berr: Yahoo! needs fixing; it should avoid bidding for Dow Jones. And will Susan Decker now quit?
May 3, 2007: $40 million in 2006 too much for Semel
December 2007: Yahoo! reorganization annoints Decker; you call this a reorganization? Terry Semel should be fired.