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Mohanjeet Arora
People Director, The Brandtech Group
Mohanjeet Arora's first job was at Domino's pizza. There, he learned to do every job there was, so he was never a rabbit caught in the headlights; that ethos of understanding businesses has stuck with him and today he is a cutting edge HR leader, learning to work with AI and making it his friend...
Mohanjeet Arora
People Director, The Brandtech Group
Mohanjeet Arora's first job was at Domino's pizza. There, he learned to do every job there was, so he was never a rabbit caught in the headlights; that ethos of understanding businesses has stuck with him and today he is a cutting edge HR leader, learning to work with AI and making it his friend...
Like many graduates, Mohanjeet Arora, known to everyone as Mo, surfaced from his BA Business Studies degree in 1996 and didn’t know what to do with it. While he searched for the answer, he joined Leeds University on their IT helpdesk. “I had big ideas about going to South Korea or Japan to start my working life there, but I went full circle and stayed in Leeds!” Familiarity was a comfortable cloak, but he realised that his ambition was greater.
‘My first job was at Domino’s pizzas – I learned to do all the jobs’
“My brother and relations had a Domino’s franchise in Gateshead, Newcastle and I helped out. I didn’t even know what it was at the time!” he laughs. Working in one of the biggest and most successful pizza chains in the UK gave him a buzz – the fast pace, quick turn arounds and ‘always on’ nature was lapped up by the young Arora.
“I began to enjoy it, and an opportunity came up to open my own franchise in Darlington in the northeast, my parents had retired and offered to invest as silent partners.” Arora admits it was ‘really’ hard work and while Domino’s was well known it wasn’t in that part of the country which meant he also had to put the groundwork in to establish the brand in his location.
I made sure I could do every role in the store from making pizzas, answering the calls, driving, doing the pre-opening and closing duties and everything in between because I didn’t want to be held to ransom by anyone
He wasn’t afraid of hard work and abided by the many stipulations, ‘answer the phone in two rings’ ‘up-sell orders’ – he became proud of the tidy operation that he was running – adding garlic bread successfully to customer orders and not being fazed by ‘mystery diners’. It was, as he dubs it an ‘insane’ workload and like all bonds with the captor, it soon soured as the hours crept up and became unmanageable even for the hungriest of professionals.
“It was around the time that The Simpsons sponsored Domino’s and profits started to climb. I made sure I could do every role in the store from making pizzas, answering the calls, driving, doing the pre-opening and closing duties and everything in between because I didn’t want to be held to ransom by anyone.”
It was a shrewd tactic that ensured that if staff let him down the show could go on. And, then just as the curtain lifted the Chief Executive Officer took a visit and was impressed. “He knew I had been running the store for a while and said that if I ever decided to sell that he would offer me a job working in the management side of the business, so within eight months I did both of those things.” Arora found himself as a business analyst looking at profit and loss and working out the sweet spots of when it was time to buy and sell at different locations.
While capable in his finance role, he realised it wasn’t a passion - what he was enjoying was seeing how his colleagues progressed when they undertook some career development. “We’d send them on these courses at the Milton Keynes Head Office and they’d come back as a transformed version of themselves.” It was a light bulb moment as to what he wanted to do next.
‘I liked the idea of getting into the HR space’
He went back to studying and emerged in 2006 after a year with a master’s in human resources management from Middlesex University. It was the springboard to the Royal Mail’s graduate management scheme which he began in October of that same year. Like many of the HR greats, Arora landed on his feet there and was surrounded by bright professionals to learn from. “I was working in a unionised environment, and you had to get things right because the Union reps knew the processes and policies inside out,” he says.
There were opportunities galore, but the pull of Domino’s came once more. “They offered me a business partner role – I knew it all, pizza topping codes, cooking times – the whole lot. It was a great time to work there – the former Chief Marketing Officer became the Chief Executive Officer, and his mantra was ‘be like number one but act like number two’ – Arora remembered that for ever more.
There was one day where I made 17 calls back to back. I started in Switzerland and ended in California.
It was a business that was hungry to be first at everything – including taking orders online. The remit was that the ‘new’ didn’t have to be perfect as long as it beat the competition to first to market. As with the rule for all good ‘parties’ Arora decided to leave on a high and joined The MSG Group in 2011 – the largest Domino’s pizza franchise group. He was responsible for all people-related aspects for Head Office across its 90 stores with a head count of 3,000. “Naively I thought I could make the commute work from north London every day!” The pressure of leaving the house at 6am to ‘beat the M25 traffic’ became debilitating, as was the falsehood that he could leave on time on the return trip, and so it was that practicalities, as they often do, took over.
