One HR pro shares her career journey, from waitressing at Sonic to founding an HR consultancy

We’ve launched a new series where we chat 1:1 with HR pros about their career journeys. Want to be featured in an upcoming edition? Click here to share your story with us.

Ahead of Katie Strickland’s 15th birthday, her mom made her get a job. There weren’t many employment options in her small North Carolina town, so Strickland settled for a waitress gig at the local Sonic Drive-In, where she delivered food to customers in their cars on rollerskates.

Years later, and with two-decades of HR experience under her belt, Strickland founded her own consulting firm, StricklyHR, in Raleigh, North Carolina. She said the people lessons she learned in her first job—like how to develop and manage relationships—still stick with her today.

“I look back now, and I can see how much effort I put into making us a team, and not only worrying about my relationships with other people, but their relationships with each other,” Strickland told HR Brew. “I would say, I’ve always been in HR, because I’ve always been trying to facilitate and keep [teams] on the same page.”

Strickland spoke with HR Brew about how the experiences she had early in her career have informed her journey in HR.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Are there experiences from your early career that influence the work you do now?

Looking back on college jobs and first jobs out of college, when you have a little bit more freedom about looking for a new role and you don’t have yet the things to be responsible for, I definitely remember that feeling of, “Okay, I have lost trust or lost faith in the company”…and it was like a light switch got flipped…And I see that, in the younger generation now in the workplace as well, and I can identify with it. It’s one of the reasons I do what I do, because I don’t want that switch to get flipped. I want people to maintain their trust and have faith in the relationship that they have with the companies that I work with.

When did you know you wanted to work in HR?

At the time, I was assisting the corporate account manager [at Enterprise Rent-A-Car], and part of that responsibility had involved…[taking] them through new processes, and designed and delivered training. I had been selected for a diversity board that Enterprise was doing in my region, and I was often sought out as just a sounding board for, “This happened, and how do I deal with it?” and I really liked that role. I felt fulfilled when people sought me out to help them with stuff like this…And it was funny because my mother spent her career in HR, as well, so I remember calling my mom and being like, “Hey, so looks like I want to do HR, too.”

How would you describe your HR career so far?

Fun and fulfilling…I started in more traditional roles. I was a recruiter, I was a benefits administrator, and, in one of my early recruitment roles, I also dabbled a little bit in compensation and a little bit in employee relations. And then, I got to a large global employer, where I spent about 10 years, and that’s where I like to say that I grew up…That’s where I really learned how to think strategically, to take something from being transactional or operational, and put it into, how do we make this a business strategy? Is this a valid way that we could make our company more successful?

What advice would you give your younger self?

When you have a feeling, trust it enough to investigate if it’s a valid feeling. I didn’t trust myself early…Because I wasn’t listening to myself, I was trying to look outside and find external validation…So, I think if I trusted my gut sooner, I probably would have identified my ultimate career desire, because, like I said, I spent 10 years at a very large global corporation, and I could have spent my entire career there, and felt fine, and happy, and taken care of, but I didn’t really find fulfillment. And so, I had the courage to step outside that, and realize that I actually wanted to lead HR. I actually wanted to be in a small company where I could be more impactful and build programs that directly impacted the lives of the employees that I cared about. I think I would have gotten there sooner if I had trusted myself earlier on.