How Yemeksepeti recruited 33 developers in cohorts and evolved its junior recruitment strategy to bootcamps

About Yemeksepeti

Founded in 2001, Yemeksepeti is the first and biggest online food order company in Turkey. As of May 2015, it was acquired by the world's biggest food ordering platform; Delivery Hero. Yemeksepeti has 60.000 contracted delivery restaurants across Turkey and Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. It has more than 20 million registered users.

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Yemeksepeti Management Trainee Program

Yemeksepeti called these bootcamps as Management Trainee (MT) Program and after a long time, welcomed new graduates and fourth-year students to the company. The goals of the bootcamps were to develop participants’ technical skills in line with the needs of Yemeksepeti, to improve social skills of participants and to create social bond between developers before hiring for improved loyalty and work performance.

Yemeksepeti traditionally had senior- and mid-level developers in the company; but recently decided to support its teams with junior developers for more effective use of time and resources.

However, there were certain challenges in hiring junior developers:

• Finding the right candidates that would fit into each team takes a long time, and it is challenging to truly evaluate the skills of candidates with limited work experiences
• Training new graduates within the companyis costly
• Adaptation time between the existing teams and fresh graduates is longer than ideal

Our approach to alleviate the above concerns was as follows:

• Candidate selection process: When selecting bootcamp participants, Patika looked into background and skills of hundreds of applicants using our own selection dashboards and algorithm tests. As a final step, Yemeksepeti evaluated only the cultural fit of applicants through interviews. We helped Yemeksepeti conduct these interviews in a very short time. Interviews were completed in only two days with over 70 candidates for each bootcamp.
• Content tailored to Yemeksepeti’s needs: We tailored each bootcamp’s content based on Yemeksepeti’s requirements. Thus, the candidates were introduced to Yemeksepeti technologies and way of doing business even before joining the team.
• Onboarding to Yemeksepeti even before hiring: During the bootcamps, we held several company meetings and ensured that the candidates are well aware of the company culture. Thanks to these meetings, Yemeksepeti also had the opportunity to get to know the candidates.
• Teamwork skills: Since teamwork is very important at Yemeksepeti, we made sure that candidates completed their assignments and projects in teams. This improved their  initiative taking and effective communication skills.
• Hiring in a single day: At the end of the bootcamps, without needing any additional hiring process, Yemeksepeti interviewed each participant shortly to understand their current needs and hired candidates in a single day.
• Virtuous cycle with each bootcamp: The graduates of the first bootcamp attended the next ones as teaching assistants to mentor new candidates. This virtuous cycle helped each new candidate adapt to the company culture much faster.

In 3 bootcamps, Patika and Yemeksepeti contributed to the developer ecosystem by providing high quality training to 75 new developers in total. Among these, 33 developers were hired directly by Yemeksepeti in cohorts!

Before we jump into Yemeksepeti team’s reflections, let’s hear from these participants themselves. Some participant comments and screenshot of their interactions on the Discord channel are below:

"Besides improving my technical skills, this bootcamphelped me organize my life better, determine priorities, and take responsibility. I pushed my limits and had the opportunity to see my potential."

"Before the bootcamp, I had thought that I knew many concepts of Android. But the training showed me that there are many fields and applications that I have never heard before. I gained a new vision thanks to this process."

"As a new graduate, the meetings we had with the Yemeksepeti teams taught me a lot. I learned what awaits me in the industry and what I should expect. In addition, getting training from Patika’s senior trainer helped us have an expert opinion and knowledge in .Net."

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