Yahoo revenue took a dip this quarter, but earnings were on the rise, as was morale, according to CEO Marissa Mayer.

Revenue came in at $1.14 billion for the first quarter, down 7 percent from the same time period last year. Earnings, however, were up 36 percent to $390 million.

During a conference call with analyst, Mayer again stressed that Yahoo's recovery will take several years. "Our long-term success will be defined by a series of sprints," she said, the first of which was "getting people to believe in Yahoo."

That has been accomplished by a series of hires that has positioned Yahoo to "step up our cadence of product development and to build more beautiful products," Mayer said. "We're now back in the game."

The number of resumes Yahoo received during the quarter tripled, while its attrition rate is half of what it was last year, she said. Furthermore, Yahoo is seeing a "steady increase" in boomerang hires - or former Yahoos returning to the company. "Fourteen percent of hires we made in Q1 were boomerangs, [or] one in every seven," she said.

Mayer said she has committed to making Yahoo "the best place to work" - the work-from-home flap notwithstanding.

The next phase, or sprint, for Yahoo will be product development, Mayer said. She pointed to some of the company's recent acquisitions, including the reported $30 million that the firm spent on news app Summly. At the end of the call, she showed off the service by having it condense her 2,000 word speech into 140 words.

Recent reports suggested that Yahoo was looking to expand its relationship with Apple, which currently uses Yahoo's weather and finance apps on iOS. Mayer declined to directly address those rumors, and instead stressed that Yahoo has deals with all the major players - Microsoft, Facebook, Google, and Apple.

"It's a very unique blend in terms of being able to partner with all four of them, and it represents how well Yahoo is able to partner," Mayer said. When teaming up, Yahoo thinks about how its services and content can expand to different platforms and places that Yahoo users might frequent, she said.