As many as 500 Yahoo employees could lose their jobs as the struggling web portal prepares for a new round of layoffs, The New York Times reports. This will be the third round of layoffs in the last two years for the company, which dismissed 2,400 workers last year.

The layoffs will not actually take place until June, according to All Things Digital, but Yahoo is already seeing several executives and important employees jump ship amid the bedlam. Dan Foehner, VP of sales operations, left for a job at Facebook, and many top engineers have defected to Microsoft to follow former Yahoo employee Qi Lu, who now leads Microsoft's online efforts.

Yahoo, which currently has 13,600 employees, has continued to struggle in the face of the economic recession and the rise of Google to the top of the search market. The web portal faced criticism last year for turning down an acquisition from Microsoft, and appeared to be in tumult when co-founder Jerry Yang announced he would step down as CEO.

New CEO Carol Bartz is now faced with task of returning Yahoo to its glory days, and she is already examining the possibility of selling off less important assets, such as HotJobs, and has even revived discussions with Microsoft for a search advertising deal.