Armed with a graduate degree, Aditya Kharwa joined the ‘crew’ at the first McDonald’s outlet opened by HardCastle Restaurants (the second in India) in Bandra, Mumbai, back in 1996. Today, he heads the Restaurant Solutions Group (RSG), one of four divisions within the key, 13-member People Resources team at HardCastle. Along the way, he has completed a PGDBM from Welingkar’s Institute of Management, Mumbai.
There are others like him at McDonald’s, in India and abroad, who have grown from within the ranks. Among them is Global CEO and Vice-Chairman, Jim Skinner, who leads the ‘world’s largest food service company with 33,000 restaurants in 118 countries’. After a 10-year stint in the US Navy, he joined McDonald’s as a trainee restaurant manager in Illinois in 1971. When his performance review comes up, one of the KRAs evaluated is ‘people resources’.
No wonder then that HardCastle is happy to showcase Kharwa as an example of McDonald’s’ approach to talent. Its employee value proposition is ‘fun, flexibility & future’, and at the back of every visiting card is written: ‘First Choice for the Future’.