Pidge has been found and created on a firm belief that our services are directly proportional to the quality of our frontline executives. The consumer experience that we promise to deliver, and which lies at the core of Pidge, is determined by people who deliver it at the customer’s doorstep. So, we have always seen our delivery executives as our brand ambassadors, and made unrelenting efforts towards their training and growth, both personal and professional. Pidge never compromises on quality, a proof of which lies in the stringent selection and training process that is employed for hiring and preparing our riders.
Preliminary Screening
Each delivery executive that gets hired at Pidge, as a full-time employee, has to make his way through five levels of screening. After all, the acceptance rate for riders at Pidge is below 2%. The first and foremost is a checklist form that all the applicants have to submit, where they are required to disclose their personal details such as name and age, their educational qualification, and other compliance details including their driver’s license and vehicle registration certificate. To become a Pidge executive, one needs to have graduated high school, at the least. The first level of filtration is done on the basis of this checklist, and anybody who does not meet the required criteria completely is not allowed to proceed further. In a typical scenario, only about sixty out of a hundred get shortlisted for the next level.
All the shortlisted candidates then have a group interaction with our Recruiting Head, in which every aspect of Pidge’s service and philosophy is carefully explained to them. The objective here is to make clear the exceptional standards that Pidge aspires for, and consequently, the expectations that arise from its employees. Awareness about the uniqueness of our business model, as well as about the different set of responsibilities that it entails is crucial for the prospective riders. This helps in filtering out those who enjoy the part time/gig-structure of the on-demand industry rather than full time employment. The remaining pool of candidates is then met with our selection team, which evaluates them on a wide variety of aspects.
Crème de la crème
“I have always believed in potential over experience. Skills can be taught but attitude is inherent,” says our founder, Ratnesh Verma. This is exactly what we seek in the applicants-potential. The way in which they show up for the interview and their conduct throughout is a clear indicator of that. The degree of enthusiasm and sincerity that they exhibit in understanding and retaining the information that was previously given to them also sets out their attitude to belong. Apart from this, a clear and polite way of communication, irrespective of the language, is also an essential requirement. Each applicant is also questioned about the motivation behind him choosing to be a delivery executive, and what he likes the most about it. No more than 30-40% of candidates eventually make it to the next round, which is with the Manager of the Operations team.
The Manager sets an average quality of the existing pool of Pidge delivery executives as a benchmark, and then checks if the applicant is better than that average. We firmly believe that if we keep hiring people who are above average, this average will keep increasing, ultimately leading to a significant rise in Pidge’s standards. Only about 10% of the remaining applicants are able to proceed to the next round, where they get to interact with our Founder and Operations Head. After these few minutes of interaction with the applicants, and gauging their body language, communication skills and certain soft skills, the final decision is taken. We ultimately end up hiring fewer than 5% of the entire bunch of applicants.
Maximizing Potential through Training
At Pidge, we aim to provide a consistent experience to all our customers. To achieve this, all these newly hired delivery executives have to mandatorily go through an in-house training process, which spans across four days. It starts with an orientation about Pidge’s operations and their role in the company, and ends after our Head of Rider Training and Development is satisfied with their mock deliveries. In between the two, they have several sessions with different departments of Pidge, making them understand the correct protocol of action.
An extremely important part of this entire process is the soft skills training. Being considered as Pidge’s brand ambassadors, their demeanor in the field is of fundamental importance to us. Appropriate body language, maintenance of personal hygiene and a sense of customer’s personal space are some of the facets that our delivery executives are trained in. Maintaining exceptional standards is a continuous effort, and we make that effort at Pidge by re-evaluating and re-training our executives at regular intervals, based on the feedback we receive from our customers.
As a result of this, our delivery executives feel important, and feel that they are being respected and cared for. “Sir, thank you for focusing on our personal and professional growth along with the growth of Pidge,” read a message sent by one of Pidge’s executives to the management. Through our selection as well as our training model, we try to inculcate a sense of confidence in our employees, which they are able to pass on to the customer in their deliveries. Pidge takes pride in the fact that this motivation and commitment makes our employees stand out from the crowd.
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