Sanjiv Razdan is the Founder of GLEAM Network and former Chief Operations Officer for Sweetgreen where he led the Field Operations, Food Safety & QA, and Ops Services + Innovation teams. He played a key role in shaping the strategy and direction of the brand as an integral member of its leadership team.
Additionally, he was also the Chief of Operations for Dine Brands where he was instrumental in the turnaround of the brand. Prior to that, he had a multi-disciplinary global career with Yum Brands, spanning assignments in Dallas, London, and New Delhi.
With close to 30 years of extensive experience in the food service industry in both company-owned and franchised environments, Sanjiv founded GLEAM Network to fulfil his personal purpose in life: to help people in their leadership journey. Simply put, GLEAM is a network of executives from the food service space who are committed to leadership development and mentorship. Sanjiv earned his post-graduate diploma in Hotel Administration from ITC Hotels School of Hotel Administration in India. He is also a graduate of the University of Mumbai where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from St. Xavier’s College.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Sanjiv’s background and how he got to work with Sweetgreen.
- How Sanjiv rose to management at Yum Brands.
- How studying physics and working in the food service industry helped to grow Sanjiv’s career.
- The transformation Sanjiv brought about in Sweetgreen and what he looked for when building a team.
- The right mindset, mentality, and strategies needed to curate a great team.
- Sanjiv’s advice to new executives inheriting existing teams.
- How Sanjiv led a diverse team of employees from different education levels, cultures, and locations.
- What people should avoid when growing teams.
- Where to learn more and connect with Sanjiv Razdan.
- Sanjiv’s latest project: GLEAM Network (Global Leadership Enhancement & Mentorship).
In this episode…
Recruiting and building a team for any organization can be a challenge, and it only gets more complex when building a crew for a large organization; particularly if the organization is as big as some food service brands like Applebee’s and Yum Brands. This requires hiring managers and recruiters to take their time and plan well before execution.
Having been in similar situations before, Sanjiv Razdan learnt a lot. He has worked with brands from different countries and cultures and has built well-coordinated teams for brands in India, England, and USA.
In this episode, Sanjiv Razdan shares with Greg Toroosian his framework for growing and managing complex teams. He talks about his experience working for big brands, how he built multi-cultural teams, his strategies for inheriting existing teams and assessing the members, and what inspired him to start the GLEAM Network. Stay tuned.
Resources Mentioned in this episode
Sponsor for this episode…
This episode is brought to you by Elevate Hire, a talent acquisition firm which provides leadership and senior level recruiting services for early-stage companies. Elevate Hire also offers advisory and consultancy services for select clients.
Elevate Hire was founded by Greg Toroosian after more than a decade in the Talent Acquisition space, working with startups, globally recognized brands and recruiting agencies, because I found that too many early-stage companies were struggling to recruit and retain top talent during crucial times of growth.
Because recruitment and talent retainment are keys to having a successful company in today’s fast-paced economy, Elevate Hire is committed to helping you recruit the right top tier talent, at the right time, can differentiate the most successful companies from the rest of their field.
If your company needs assistance with talent search, hiring process improvements, choosing and implementing recruiting tools, team training, or if you’re in need of an advisor, get in touch with us today to find out how we can make this work so that you can start building the company of your dreams.
Click this link to learn more about us and the services that we can provide for you and your company.
Episode Transcript
Intro
Welcome to the Elevate Hire podcast where CEOs founders and executives of early stage companies talk through their experiences of building teams.
Greg Toroosian
Greg Toroosian here, Founder of Elevate Hire and host of the Elevate Hire podcast where I talk to CEOs, founders and executives about the challenges and successes they’ve had while recruiting for their teams. This episode is actually brought to you by Elevate Hire a talent acquisition advisory, consultancy and execution firm to provide leadership and senior level recruiting services to early stage and rapidly growing companies. We believe that recruiting and retaining talent is key to having a successful company. In today’s fast moving economy being able to recruit the top tier talent at the right time can differentiate most successful companies from the rest of their field. If your company needs assistance in talent search, hiring process improvements, choosing and implementing recruiting tools, team training or if you’re in need of an advisor we can help. For more details visit elevatehire.com.
Our guest on this episode is a very accomplished executive within the fast casual restaurant industry. I know from my time working at Sweetgreen as their director of talent acquisition while he was the COO, I had the pleasure albeit brief and reporting directly to both him and the CEO. So I have first hand experience in his philosophy and strategy for building teams, and hiring in general. Sanjiv Razdan, welcome to the show.
Sanjiv Razdan 1:29
Thank you, Greg. appreciate you having me. And it’s a pleasure.
Greg Toroosian 1:33
Yeah, I’m glad we could do this. I’m glad we could connect and it’s great to see your face. In all honesty, we are currently on Zoom. We’re right in the middle of quarantine. So still and COVID-19 dealing with all of their remote aspects. So it’s great to see you via Zoom and connect again.
Sanjiv Razdan 1:49
Yeah, absolutely. It’s lovely to see you again. I know we were exchanging notes about what we’ve been doing to keep our parents—
Greg Toroosian 2:00
Yes, yeah, the challenges.
Sanjiv Razdan 2:05
I know, I had the benefit of my daughter, giving me my haircuts.
Greg Toroosian 2:12
Oh, really? Okay. Yeah, you’re lucky. I’ve been asked by my wife to like line up the back. She got a bit sick of my beards, every Tuesday and almost. So yeah, basically, I like to start the show by turning things over to the guests. So they can introduce themselves in their own words and give an overview of their career. Let us know how you got to this point. So feel free to be as detailed or even as high level as you want. I’m sure we’ll go into it.
Sanjiv Razdan 2:39
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