In this episode of By HR For HR, listeners will gain insights into the intricate balance between managing people problems and hiring challenges from the unique perspective of an operator. Jocelyn King, CEO of Virgil HR, is joined by Nikita Khandheria, CEO of ERIA, who shares her experiences as a serial entrepreneur navigating diverse industries.
Nikita discusses the importance of distinguishing between people problems and hiring issues, emphasizing the significance of a rigorous hiring process and the trust between leadership and HR teams. She sheds light on how managing expectations and fostering clarity in day-to-day experiences can lead to better retention, rather than relying solely on perks.
Listeners will also hear about Nikita's fascinating journey from starting non-profit clinics at age 13 to building and scaling multiple businesses across various sectors. This episode offers valuable takeaways for HR professionals looking to strengthen their approach to people management and hiring strategies.
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[00:00:22] Hi everyone and welcome to By HR For HR, the podcast where HR professionals learn from workplace experts shaping the future of work. I'm your host Jocelyn King, CEO of Virgil HR. If you're not familiar with Virgil HR, we're passionate about helping HR teams navigate employment and labor law compliance with confidence, so they can spend less time worrying about regulations and more time focusing on their people.
[00:00:45] Today I'm excited to welcome Nikita Khandheria, CEO of ARIA. Nikita's perspective is valuable because she sees HR from the operator's side, the person who feels the cost when people decisions go wrong, and I think you're going to walk away with some valuable tidbits and practical takeaways for your own organization. Nikita, welcome to the show. Nikita Khandheria, Hi, thank you so much for having me and making the time for me to be here. Absolutely. Before we begin and go through some questions, do you want to give a bit of a background of yourself to the audience?
[00:01:15] Yeah, I mean, I would say that I'm a serial entrepreneur. Ever since I was a kid, I have absolutely loved starting businesses and learning new things. And I think for me, the biggest thing was like growing up, I wanted to do everything and it was crazy to me that you only live once. And so you theoretically only choose one profession and there's all this world that you don't get to understand or see or learn. And so I've just tried to make it my life goal to experience and make the most out of life that I can.
[00:01:43] And so for me, that manifests in getting into different, different industries. I started off in the healthcare industry and then I migrated over to, I did a little bit of dependency law and then I owned a restaurant, then I had laundromats, event spaces, so just did a little bit of everything. That's really interesting. And so what do you do now? I still own, so it's now almost become like a portfolio. So I do still own the event company. I own a bunch of real estate. I own some properties. I own a resort.
[00:02:13] Just like an amalgamation of a bunch of different things. I can learn a little bit about everything. That's really interesting. So, you know, I know that your point of view is that a people problem is often mistaken for a hiring problem. And so one of the reasons why I was really interested in bringing you onto the podcast is because the operator background that you come from.
[00:02:34] So I think it's just, it's helpful for HR to hear through the lens of an operator on things that are related to what they're working on. So for example, this idea of a people problem is often mistaken for a hiring problem. When a manager comes to you asking for another head count, what questions do you ask before saying yes?
[00:02:55] I think that for me personally, I'm a big believer in if you have the right person and I do work really closely with my HR team. And we do have a very rigorous onboarding and also just like hiring process where like you have to go through so many rounds of screening and we aren't big like resume hirers. We believe that like a resume can be a product of anything, right?
[00:03:19] You could be a general manager for Michelin star restaurant and just have the best AGM and rest of the team and you could be fully incompetent and there's no way your resume would tell me that. Right? And so we go through a very rigorous period. So when one of them do, one of my managers does come to me, I do have complete faith that they are correcting what they're saying.
[00:03:38] And I'm a big believer in like, I'm like, hey, these are the metrics, right? As long as you're in your labor budget, I don't care if you hire one person that takes up the entire budget or you hire 10 people and split it 10 ways, right? It is really up to you what works best with your leadership style. Because at the end of the day, you are the manager running this team. I'm not, right? So I don't get to decide what it takes for you to be successful in that position.
[00:04:02] Yeah, that's, that's, um, requires, I think a significant amount of trust between you and your leadership. So that's amazing. You have that.
[00:04:09] I think it's between me and the leadership, but also between me and my HR team, because I really, really touch, trust my director of hiring. And she and I've been together for 10 years. She knows me inside out. She knows what type of managerial skills I like. Whenever we're hiring, we also have like an A through D list of things that I'm good at, medium at, bad at. And then we do that for everyone on the team.
[00:04:35] And so we do a really good job of like balancing that. And so I really do trust her when she says, Hey, we're going to bring in this person so that they can compliment another person's down or, you know, your weaknesses and things like that. And so we're all very good at just being like, okay, if she thinks so, then we've got to do it. That's really neat. Um, you're lucky to have somebody who's been with you for that long too.
[00:04:57] I, we've had touch wood really good tenure across the board. Um, we always say that we're very difficult. Like it's very difficult to get a job with us because we put you through the ringer. But once you're there, like you are retiring with the company. There is no other world where you're going anywhere else.
[00:05:15] Yeah. I mean, I know that you really believe retention is less about perks and more about clarity and the day-to-day experience. Uh, I hear you that everybody's retiring with you, which is awesome. But for the select few that don't, what did you learn when you looked closely at why people actually left? And was there a moment at any point in time when the real reason surprised you?
[00:05:39] I am a big believer in managing expectations. And I think it took me a little while to be able to accept the reality of situations. I started obviously very young. I started hiring when I was 13 and there was definitely an element of like ego where I was like, I don't want to believe that X, Y, and Z is true. And so I'm going to put up a fluff story and like build out a story that sounds better. Right? So it would be like, yeah, I know that I only have one restaurant, but in the next six months, I believe,
[00:06:08] I'll have five. Right? It's not a realistic thing, but it was what I thought I needed to tell a chef that was really well known to be able to trust me and come on board with me. Right? And I think it took me a long time to be like, you know what? People are going to be okay with what it is. You just need to manage expectations and people will be more let down if they believe something that doesn't end up happening than if you tell them what's going to happen and it happens. Right? And so I think that was the main reason that I did have some turnover initially.
[00:06:37] It was because I wasn't able to manage expectations the way I needed to. And I didn't come to terms with what the reality is of situations sometimes. That's really interesting. So you mentioned that you started hiring at 13. Can you walk us through kind of your entrepreneurial experience a little bit? Because that seems incredible to be doing something so young.
[00:06:59] Yeah. Yeah. I built two nonprofit clinics when I was 13. And then I moved over to the States, worked, as I said, in dependency law. When I was 17, I got funded for a restaurant.
[00:07:12] Opened the restaurant. Took my first draw from the restaurant. Bought like 20 laundromats from Marin down to Chico. Sold those. Bought a CPG company. Took that national. Exited that. Bought out my investors on the property that I then made an events company from a restaurant. And then opened a bunch more small projects.
[00:07:35] Wow. That's really incredible. Like this amount of time isn't going to cover all the questions that I would want to ask you as a fellow entrepreneur myself. So that's really neat. But if we were to switch back to kind of the lens of the HR leader, you have built and scaled so many companies. You've sold them. You've watched them grow. What was it about the HR leaders that stayed with you that made you so successful?
[00:08:02] I mean, everything. Right. I think that the HR team is what determines what my team is. And so I think it's really important. I think that it's really important for you to be able to be fully transparent and do. So we have mandatory one on one. So our HR team does sit down with all of our managers beyond just like the day to day operations to continue to understand where they're struggling. What are they doing well at and continuing to understand their personalities and their strengths and weaknesses as it grows.
[00:08:32] So, for example, someone on my team is recently getting married and is thinking about having kids. Right. She's fully tapped in on that. And so now she knows that the next person she hires is going to have to be a workhorse because obviously the manager still has like his intellect and ability to think through things. But he's going to need somebody to be able to deliver on it. Or like she hired a second secretary and she didn't even run it like she didn't even have to run it by me.
[00:08:58] She was like, it's in the budget. But she hired a secretary to do majority of the work that one of our managers was doing who did go on paternity. And I was like, oh, you don't think we need to hire someone interim for that position? And she said, no, he's a workaholic. He's going to continue to want to think about work. All we need is someone who can deliver on all the stuff that he's thinking about. And so it's just that like back and forth where she knows what to do and when to do it. And she spent enough time understanding my brain to be able to do something like that.
[00:09:27] And as a CEO who isn't an HR professional, but works really closely with them, what do you wish HR people understood about how operators think? I think understanding that not every operator is the same is probably the first thing. I think understanding that it starts from the CEO, right? So you sit down, figure out what the CEO is good at, bad at, and then also what conversation works well with them, right? Like if we don't communicate in the same language, then it's not going to work and there's not going to be a good culture at the company.
[00:09:56] So I think understanding that even if you have a better qualified candidate, if it isn't somebody that's complementary with what your CEO needs, it doesn't matter how well qualified they are, right? So I think being able to look beyond qualifications and really start to think about, hey, this is the company. Even if it's a small company that doesn't have a lot of people, you are shaping what that culture is going to look like.
[00:10:17] And if there's a mismatch between the way that the CEO's brain works and the ethos and the culture that you start to bring in with other people, then it's just not going to work. And so I always say like the HR person almost has to be in love with the CEO and know everything about the CEO and to understand how the CEO's brain works and really respect it. So much so that when they do see an overqualified candidate that wants to come and is excited and passionate and the perfect person, they're able to be like, yeah, but you're not the perfect person for my CEO.
[00:10:47] And they need to not resent their CEO for making their job harder, right? Yeah, that's very true. Well, just kind of within your experience, what's been the most useful thing an HR leader or an HR partner has ever done for you? Honestly, taking ownership. I think when my HR team is like, hey, you've given me the budgets. You don't need to be involved in every single hiring, right? You'll meet them. I know you. I know what we need.
[00:11:16] And then similar to the secretary thing, right? Like taking the decision to just make it happen as opposed to having to put it through me and then debating it and everything. Just doing it and showing me like, hey, this is what I did and this is why I did it. And it's working out well, right? Taking ownership over their department and taking it off of my plate, I think would be the biggest thing. Yeah, absolutely. I can relate to that. Shifting a little bit to AI, hot topic, right? I did have a question for you about that.
[00:11:45] So I know that you use AI to free up capacity and admin and operations, but deliberately keep it away from the human side of hospitality, which I think is incredible. Where exactly do you draw that line? And has there been a task where you tried automation and pulled it back? So everything client facing, we like to have an actual human being do. And that was kind of our thing from the get go, because our brand was really built as a founder based brand initially. So most people would come in and be like, oh, I was told to work with Nikita.
[00:12:15] And it was very difficult for me to even transition into being like, well, these are the people that I physically trained and they think just like me and they're human beings. And, you know, they have X, Y, and Z that I don't have. And it took a lot of time for me to even hand that over to any of my planners or my director of ops and things like that. And so we just said that we would never move over to any of that being tech based, right? Even if it felt like it would make life easier.
[00:12:41] Majority of what we have automated is like response rates, GEO, SEO, pitching for publication. We've automated a lot of like floor plan development, BEO curation. So it's more so on the back end. And I actually haven't scaled back on anything that we have developed or rolled out on the automation side. Touchwood, I think we've been very, very intentional with it. And so it's been very successful that way for us.
[00:13:08] And, you know, obviously the whole idea is that AI is freeing up a few hours of someone's week. Where does that time go? To double check and triple check. I feel like we get so many leads. And so anytime I have some time spared, the thing that I want to do is I want to go through my calendar and be like, OK, I talked to these seven people this week. Have I sent them follow ups? Have I thought about what I should be saying to them? And I think that's really where it goes.
[00:13:35] How do you make sure it turns into better guest and employee experiences? I mean, there's no way to guarantee it. And I think that there's no way to say that it directly does. But I feel like if you have more time, you can be more thoughtful. Right. At least you have the option to be. Yeah. Now, last question before we wrap up. If an HR professional suspects their company's hiring problem is really a broken process, how do you think they should raise that with a CEO like you so it actually lands?
[00:14:04] I think bringing me some actualized evidence would be helpful. Right. So like, hey, look at the comps. The other companies around us are that are doing same volume as us have this retention rate. And this is why they're spending less on this. Right. And this company is doing this. And I think case studies are a really good way to remove the CEO from the blame seat and be like, hey, let's look at these and aspire to be them.
[00:14:34] And I think the case study just separates it. Right. It makes it about somebody else as opposed to you. And I think that that's what would be most powerful for me. And that's how my team talks to me when they want to break something to me that they don't really want to tell me because they're worried about hurting my feelings. I'm like, it's okay, guys. I'm a big girl. I can handle it. But usually what they'll do is they'll say, hey, you know how you love like Arnold from LVMH is one of my like biggest idols. Like I have the biggest professional crush on him.
[00:15:00] They'll be like, do you remember when he was trying to buy Fendi and Fendi didn't want to be bought? And then, you know, X, Y, and Z. This situation feels similar to that. You respect him. Look at how his brain did this. Right. And so it's just nice to kind of create that degree of separation sometimes. Yeah. And it sounds like the relationship as well. The fact that they know you so well, they're able to kind of communicate and persuade you and in turn influence you too. So that's really great.
[00:15:30] Well, Nikita, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your experience. Thank you. I really look forward to staying in touch and keeping up. Thank you for having me. How can people? Absolutely. Yeah. How can people get in touch with you? They can email me, Nikita, at IriaEvents.co or find me on Instagram at Nikita Eliza. Fantastic. Well, if today's conversation gave you new insights, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with another HR professional.
[00:16:00] This podcast is part of VirgilHR's mission to help HR teams stay compliant, reduce risk, and lead with confidence. To learn more about VirgilHR and how we simplify compliance, visit our website at VirgilHR.com. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.
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