The CEO of a multibillion-dollar company has drawn serious backlash after an online “stunt” where he posted a job ad asking the successful candidate to cough up thousands of dollars.
Deepinder Goyal is the CEO and founder of Indian food delivery company Zomato, a company that is worth around $42 billion.
Goyal sparked widespread outrage after sharing that he was looking for a new chief of staff.
The advertisement started off pretty normally, stating the company was looking for someone who is “hungry”, has “Grade A communication skills”, “zero entitlement” and, most importantly, a “learning mindset”.
The ad specifically called for someone with minimal experience in order to have “no conditioning” or “baggage”.
Applicants were told that the role would provide them with “10x more learnings than a 2-year degree from a top management school” as they would be working with Mr. Goyal himself, along with “some of the smartest folk in consumer tech”.
Then came the catch — and boy was it a doozy.
Goyal stated that the role was not “conventional” and didn’t come with the “usual perks” you would expect with this type of job.
By “usual perks”, the CEO meant a salary.
“There will be no salary for this role for the first year,” the job description states.
Not only that, but the successful applicant would be required to pay a “fee” to the company, to a total of 20 lakh rupees, the equivalent of about $15,000 Australian dollars.
This fee would be paid in the form of a donation to non-profit organisation, Feeding India — a food donation charity that was acquired by Zomato in 2019.
To demonstrate that Zomato isn’t just doing this to save money, the company said they would contribute 50 lakh rupees ($59,000) — the equivalent of a Chief of Staff salary – to the charity of the employee’s choosing.
The company claimed that after a year, they would then start paying the worker a salary, which it promised would “definitely” be more than $59,000.
“We believe people who apply for this role should do it for the learning opportunity it presents, rather than for a fancy well paying job which will make you look cool in front of yourself, or the people you want to impress,” the ad states.
“Put differently, think of this as a fast track learning program, for you both personally and professionally – whether or not you succeed at this role. We want learners for this role, not resume builders.”
Unsurprisingly, the CEO’s post sparked widespread uproar, gaining thousands of comments and being reshared multiple times by stunned professionals.
Many people pointed out that the only applicants who would be able to afford this “opportunity” were ones who didn’t need the job in the first place.
“What is the advantage of doing this? You’re filtering for a trust fund baby who doesn’t need the money?” one person asked.
“Bad. It basically means that only someone who is already rich enough to leave salary for a year can take the job. Chief of Staff jobs aren’t for a high level executives, their for up and coming young people. So only a ‘rich kid’ could take this job, not someone self made,” another said.
Others branded the move “absurd”, “embarrassing” and an “utter blunder”.
“That’s not a job? That’s a hobby,” one person pointed out.
“The irony of asking them to be hungry and not paying them,” another said.
In a follow up post, the CEO said he had received more than 10,000 applications, made up of 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.
In a final update — and after a lot of a backlash — Goyal revealed applications had closed, claiming more than 18,000 people had applied for the role.
He then claimed the requirement for the successful applicant to pay thousands of dollars in a “fee” was “merely a filter to find the 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”.
He claimed the company would reject most of the applicants who have the money, even going as far as to claim charging people a fee was “never part of the plan”.
As “proof”, the CEO shared a message he sent someone on X, formerly Twitter, in which he claimed he would not ask for the payment and would “pay the right person anyway”.
Unfortunately for the CEO, this revelation did little to quell the backlash, with many hitting out at the “publicity stunt”.
“You might have gotten 18,000 entries but you have lost my respect by being a frivolous founder who is using his social media clout for such stupid PR stunts,” one person said.
Another said: “Everything does not need to be a marketing gimmick! People who value learning but do not have the resources would not have believed this were your plan. You may have lost on some genuinely critical talent.”
Others accused Goyal of “backtracking” after the original post didn’t receive the response he intended.
“This looks like damage control. This was clearly not a well thought, well-crafted hiring strategy,” one person wrote.
“Wonder if this is an afterthought! If you never wanted this money why [did] you keep a filter which would eliminate worthy meritorious people who were perhaps best fit but were prevented from applying for this position?” another asked.