Istanbul: Resilience Exemplified

This post isn’t for the easily offended. If you’re the type of person who puts 2 and 2 together and gets 5, I suggest closing this tab and reading no further.

–

I was chatting with Oytun, our Turkey country manager, this past weekend, because I’ve been quite concerned about what’s going on in Turkey. I was worried about our team’s safety and well-being (in addition to being concerned about the well-being of the world in general). Oytun reassured me that Turkey is a resilient country, that it always bounces back in about 2 weeks, and that I shouldn’t be worried.

That thought stayed with me, and I figured that our traffic data in Turkey should very easily be able to prove the hypothesis that Turkey bounces back in two weeks. After all, the frequency of eating out is a fair indicator of how a country is reacting to a particular terror attack or situation.

For those not in the know, here’s some context on Turkey. The country has seen more than its fair share of unrest in recent times. Since the start of 2016, they’ve suffered a series of attacks and events that have put the country on high alert. Istanbul alone has seen three violent attacks, and been at the centre of an attempted military coup.

Every time one of these events occurs, we see a country that reacts the way any country in its place would: businesses pull down their shutters, people stay indoors, security measures are beefed up, and day-to-day life is disrupted. Sitting helpless thousands of miles away, it’s terrifying – all we can think of is the safety of our colleagues, and pray that normalcy will be restored soon.

–

Something that’s amazed us is how – every time, and without exception – our team carries on with business as usual (while taking all necessary precautions, obviously). We can put this down to their incredible resilience and work ethic.

But what about the rest of the city? Does it actually take Istanbul as a whole just two weeks to get back up on its feet and get back to life?

One rarely gets to see that from an outsider’s perspective (and we were curious), so we started digging through Istanbul’s traffic patterns on Zomato. Here’s what we found:

Our website traffic in Turkey drops by as much as ~50% in the immediate aftermath of an event, but recovers to its original point within ~10-15 days.

Here’s some data to illustrate this better.

• Attacks in Ankara (March 13th) and Istanbul (March 19th): The attacks in Ankara on the 13th of March had a strong effect on traffic in Istanbul, causing a sharp dip in traffic. Just six days later, on the 19th of March, Istanbul was hit by attacks. However, the effect it had on traffic was nowhere nearly as dramatic. By the 27th of March – just two weeks after the attack in Ankara – traffic in Istanbul had returned to the point it was at just before the attacks.

• Attempted military coup across Turkey, July 15th-16th: Between military-imposed curfews, widespread protests, and the declaration of a three-month state of emergency, Turkey seemed to be in complete disarray. By the end of the 16th of July, our traffic in Istanbul had dropped to almost nothing. But by the 30th, it had recovered the gap and then gone on to grow to 6% higher than it was on the 14th of July.

Interestingly – but not entirely surprisingly – delivery restaurants gained more share of the recovering traffic (compared to dine-out restaurants) after these events. Dine-out restaurants’ traffic was also near normal within two weeks. What does that tell us? That slightly fewer people want to head outdoors to eat in the wake of any unrest, simply because it’s safer to stay indoors.

–

The hypothesis was right: two weeks.

It takes Istanbul two weeks to bounce back from events that have rocked the city. It speaks volumes of the fortitude of the Turkish people, and their ability to get on with their lives.

When I mentioned this to someone yesterday, they argued with “Yeah, but many cities bounce back from adversity. What makes Istanbul unique?” To be honest, we don’t have a benchmark to compare Istanbul to – and we hope we never do. No city, and nobody, should have to suffer what Istanbul has in recent times.

This post is simply a salute to a city with immense courage; a city that refuses to take things sitting down. But more than that, it’s a tribute to my colleagues in Istanbul, whose unyielding and eternally positive spirit is an inspiration to us all.

The failure of NPS

We periodically run anonymous Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys across our worldwide team which, by the way, now consists of 3,000 people across 22 countries. In order to get a better understanding of how Zomans the world over feel, we slice and dice the results by country and function. This time around, as always, we followed the standard approach of asking, “On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to refer a friend at Zomato?”, followed up with “Please explain the reason for the assigned score.”

We wanted to know the reasons behind the responses to better understand why someone would (or would not) refer a friend to join us, and to see if anything needed to be fixed. After going through many hundreds of responses to these two questions, we discovered something – we’ll probably never get a very high internal NPS. And the reason, is our culture. While a positively skewed score is considered good, our definition of a high score is anything upward of 50%+. We’re currently at an organisation-wide score of 35%+, and here are some responses – verbatim – that validate that figure (and let us breathe a little easier).

“Not all of my friends are Zomato material, and I wouldn’t want to see all of them here. Zomato is a great place to work at, but you need to have a specific mindset to have a great time here, and that’s why I wouldn’t bring my friends to work with us.”

“I won’t give a 9 or 10 because I know most of my friends don’t have what it takes and don’t want to dedicate themselves so much to a job. It is their choice, not mine.”

This one sums it up perfectly:

“I am glad to finally be able to explain my answer.

I do not remember what scores I assigned on previous surveys, but they were never very high. In fact, they are getting lower. Does this mean I am not happy working here? No. Does this mean that I do not think of Zomato as a place to learn and grow? Absolutely not.

Why wouldn’t I promote the very product I help developing, a product which I happen to think is so useful that I use everyday? Why would I diss what has been the most important part of my life for the past year?

I talk incessantly about my life at Zomato and about my product. But this does not mean I would recommend all my friends to work at Zomato.

When I started working here years ago, Zomato was nice. Back then, I would have totally recommend it to all my friends.

But then I started getting more involved. Work became more complex and demanding as I started getting more responsibilities. I started realizing that this isn’t for everybody. This is hard work and wild dreams. You need to be completely focused, organized and a fierce prioritizer. You need to be fully invested in now without losing focus on the big picture. What you are right now is never enough; you always feel a bit uncomfortable, a bit on the edge of the knife, a bit inexperienced and unskilled for what you are doing right now. And greatness thrives here.

Zomato is the greatest learning and growing place I ever had. I became a better person and professional because I have been pushed so much. It is not all nice and fun and games. This is ruthless and we know it.

This is also exactly what I love about working here. We foster no contentment and accept no incompetence. We as a company accept that this is not for everyone. So why do we lose our shit every time we do not score that high on this question? This does not necessarily mean there is something wrong with our culture. It does not even mean that our employee NPS is low.

It just means that we do not think that all our friends have what it takes to work here. While some of my friends just want a 9 to 5 job, others do not want to be out of their comfort zone. Some do not have the right profile to become anything higher than average around here. They are great friends and people, but will never make great Zomans.” 

Adding on:

“Not everyone would fit here. I would only refer friends who I think would thrive in this environment of frenetic pace, high amount of responsibility and a lot of thinking to do.”

“Zomato is definitely a place to learn and grow but I’m not sure I would be comfortable referring a friend of mine. This is not a job for everyone. One has to be very passionate and tireless.”

“You have to be of a special breed to work here. It’s hard work, it’s incredible hours, it’s hustle, it’s working to find impossible solutions. I don’t think a lot of my friends could handle it.”

“I think that you have to be the right fit for Zomato. If you want to learn, have a lot of energy, see the glass half full and look for opportunities rather than excuses then this is a great place to learn and challenge yourself.”

–

Though the score might be low (by our high standards), the flip side highlights its uniqueness, and the reasons justify it well. The next time, we will run the NPS survey in a slightly different way, because sometimes one needs to bend a few rules to understand Zomato better. We’ll keep you posted on how that goes.

Defining “great” in recruiting

According to us, great organisations drive growth by hiring great people who do great work. This growth creates further opportunities for the organisation to bring in more great people. These people, in turn, create even more growth for the organisation. Repeat.

We’ve used the word great five times so far, but – what does ‘great’ really mean? For any organisation, before you start hiring people who will drive your growth, it is necessary to define your benchmark of great. Then, you need to identify, sell to, and bring in these great people to join your organisation. For early-stage startups, founders should be doing (and actually do) most of the hiring. But at scale, that doesn’t scale, so you need to build a recruiting team that will ensure a continuous flow of great into the organisation. Overall, any recruiting team’s role has two primary parts – Selling and Buying. In that order. Let’s zoom into both these parts for a bit.

Selling

The recruitment team is first supposed to make the person you are talking to for a potential role in your organisation want to join your organisation. So, a recruiter’s role is to “sell” three things to the other person: the vision, the role, and the organisation’s values. Great recruiters have to embody the values of the organisation. It should be clearly visible in their actions and behaviour – from the first shake of hands to the last – because first impressions are also almost always the last. At the end of this process, the other person should really buy into what you are doing, and should want to join you.

Buying

Once the person is sold on the organisation, the recruiter becomes a buyer and is supposed to “buy” two things – culture fit, and skill fit. In that order. If your definition of great is the right one, you should be saying no to more people on the basis of culture than on the basis of skill.

The reality is that great people aren’t just going to walk in. Someone needs to reach out to them, share the dream, and get them to be a part of your organisation. Only a great recruitment team can make this possible. But – circular reference alert – what makes a great recruiter?

A recruiter has to be a great seller, as well as a great buyer; most people are only good at one of the two. This means a recruiter’s job is more complex than most others, because s/he needs to be great at both these things. It also means that a recruitment team is the most difficult one to build, and is something you should build before you start building the rest of the organisation.

Traditionally, recruitment is seen as a buyer-seller transaction where the seller (the candidate) must prove themselves to the buyer (the recruiter) by navigating through interviews. That’s a load of bulls**t. The way you should think about recruitment is anything but traditional. Think of it as courtship. Both the organisation (the recruiting team) and the person have to fall in love with each other. Otherwise, the outcome is going to be a relationship that’s anything but great.

#plug If you feel you are a great recruiter, please write in to me at s@zomato.com. We are looking for greatness across the globe.