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After graduating from high school, Karen Hall joined the US Air Force in 1987. Her first job was serving food in the dining hall.
“I started out working on the line because I was a new person, but I wound up taking over the order of supplies, making sure we had everything,” Hall told HR Brew. “I’m bossy, so I guess that kind of helped. Two older brothers, and [I’m] the only girl in the family in like 76 years…so I had to be bossy.”
After leaving the Air Force in 1989 when she had her first child, Hall worked several ad hoc jobs in various factories and doctor’s offices before joining sewing manufacturer LACorp in Lebanon, Virginia, as an HR personnel in 2015. She shared how her varied work experience taught her valuable HR lessons.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What lessons did you learn while working in the dining hall that stick with you today?
Organization. Everything had to have a place, and everything had to be in its place…If you’re in food service, you can’t just let food sit around…That’s kind of carried over into the HR thing, because you can’t let things sit. Insurance forms have to be filled out…Anything that happens has to be done in a timely manner.
You’ve had a number of jobs over the course of your career—how have they helped you in HR?
To be honest, it’s been a godsend…I learned to do medical billing when I started working in the doctor’s office, and so I know the ins and outs of what can be filed…We have 125 employees, but when you have like, 80 of them on your health insurance…when they come in, and they have a bill, and they’re saying, “Why am I getting this bill?” I can read the explanation of benefits. I can explain it to them [and say] “This is not correct. Call them and tell them that you need to fix this.”
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I’m a fixer. I don’t know if it’s a mom complex or what it is, but I want to fix things. I want to make life just as easy as I possibly can for everybody around me…As a company, we do more than just employ people…I help people out…Out of 125 people, I can name you every one of them. Tell you mostly about their families, their children, their grandkids. It’s a very small, tight-knit community…The weird jobs that I’ve had over time has really helped.
It sounds like you’ve become somewhat of a jack-of-all-trades leader.
Just in the HR experience…it’s been wonderful to know so many different things. Like I said, master of none, but I know a little bit about everything. If somebody gets married, I know where to go find the paperwork for them to get their name changed…We take care of our employees [and] their family. If one of them loses a spouse, or a child, or a sibling, you have half the factory that shows up at the funeral home.
What advice would you give your younger self?
Learn everything you can. You never know when something that seems so trivial at the time will wind up being something major that you will need later on…Just be nice to people….If you have a positive attitude, the next person is going to pick up on that…it doesn’t take much to bring a smile to their face, and their attitude once they get that smile bleeds over to the other people.