Zomato came up with yet another twist. CEO Deepender Goya, who has been under fire for sharing a job posting which pays no salary, closed the application window. Goyal said he imposed the condition as a filter to reach the best candidates for the role of his Chief of Staff. In a letter posted, Goyal also mentioned about the types of people who have applied for the position.

He said the applicants include people who have all the money, those who have some of the money, those who say they don’t have the money and those who really don’t have the money. He also said that a lot of the applications were “well thought through.” He also added that the application inbox will be closed by 6 pm today. “Stay tuned for Update 3,” he wrote.

 

Update 2: we have over 10,000 applications, a lot of them well thought through, mixed between –

1. Those who have all the money
2. Those who have some of the money
3. Those who say they don’t have the money
4. Those who really don’t have the money

We will be closing the… https://t.co/8a6XhgeOGk

— Deepinder Goyal (@deepigoyal) November 21, 2024

However, Internet were not pleased with Goyal, and what he said about the qualities he needs in his Chief of Staff. Goyal said he need the who was “down to earth”, had “zero entitlement” and would be willing to essentially pay for the privilege of working alongside hime. While he clarified that the chosen candidate would be paid the usual salary from the second year, he said that the decision would be made after the end of the first year. This new salary would exceed ₹50 LPA, he promised.

Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal wrote:

“We have closed applications for my chief of staff role.

We have received more than 18,000 applications.

We will go through these applications over the next week, and reach out to the people who we think are the right fit for an organisation. We want to build a learning organisation, and we now know thousands of people who exhibit their hunger for learning and constant improvement, over short term constraints and their current reality of life.

This wasn’t just another hiring post. As some people pointed out, the “you have to pay us 20 lacs” was merely a filter, to find people who had the power to appreciate the opportunity of a fast track career, without getting bogged down by the constraints in front of them.

We are going to reject most of the applications who have the money, or even talked about the money. We are going to find genuine intent and learning mindset from the sea of applications we have received.

In fact, charging people 20 lacs was never part of the plan.

Last but not the least, something like this can only be pulled off once in the world. Now that everyone knows the real intent behind this, we won’t be able to get the desired outcomes if we do this again.

And I really hope that “pay the company to get a job” doesn’t become a norm in this world – that’s not cool.

Money is an essential thing to keep people’s lives running, and I believe in paying more than market rate, so that money doesn’t come in the way of great work”.