Zomato restarts hiring after pandemic layoffs

New Delhi: Zomato is hiring again, less than a year after it laid off a chunk of its staff to save on costs during one of the strictest coronavirus lockdowns in the world.The restaurant discovery and food delivery platform is looking to bring on board 400 people during the rest of 2021, mostly via the referral mode. In fact, after letting 500 people go in the early days of the pandemic, it has already added 400 workers—40% through the referral route—as business has picked up in the aftermath of the pandemic-induced lockdowns.The company at present has 3,600 employees.Zomato is adopting hiring through referrals to ensure that it gets the right people and also to keep a check on the attrition rate, Akriti Chopra, head-people development at the Gurugram- based company, told The Economic Times. In May 2020, the company let go of 13% of its then workforce of 4,000, owing to the market slowdown. “We didn't see enough work for all of our employees. This was across several departments,” Chopra said.Most of the fresh hiring is for the tech and product teams, which the company has been building since the second half of 2020. It is currently adding 10-15 people every month. It will also ramp up the sales, finance and legal teams."2020 was a tough but rewarding year for us…,” Chopra said. “With the surge in demand for food delivery and dining out, the market opened up as lockdown restrictions eased. We are looking to further strengthen our team with the right set of folks who could drive the next phase of growth in Zomato,"“Referrals have really simplified our hiring process, helped us reduce the number of interview rounds, and has given us time to focus on the key attributes in a candidate,” she said.The online delivery platform recently did away with the leave approval process.“Ownership is a key characteristic in every Zoman, hence we have eliminated the leave approval process,” Chopra said. Employees will need to record in the system and not seek approval when applying for a leave. It has also made an exception due to the pandemic and carried forward the unused annual leaves for 2020 of all employees. It also gave the first week of January off for all employees.

from Economic Times https://ift.tt/3bqAQFw
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