Influential Woman · HR

Katie Cloyd

Human Resources Generalist, Ale-8-One Bottling Company

Lexington, KY

2Awards received

Certifications · Degrees · Memberships

Degree Dean's List

Her Story

About Katie

I'm an HR Generalist currently working in the beverage industry, and I'll be hitting my 2-year mark at the end of June. Before this, I spent a couple of years in healthcare recruiting, where I focused heavily on interviewing, onboarding, and hiring. Now I do similar work but for a beverage company, which has been a really cool transition. My day-to-day involves a lot of recruiting and staffing work. I do interviewing, onboarding, scheduling pre-employment appointments and drug screenings, and making sure our current employees stay compliant. My biggest responsibility is bringing in new hires and making sure we're fully staffed across the company. We have a team of three in HR, so we all share responsibilities, including the tough stuff like terminations when needed. One achievement that really stands out to me was from my time at Maxim Healthcare. We had a really sick patient who couldn't get home from the hospital in time for the holidays unless we found a night shift nurse. It was a challenging case to recruit for because of the area and the child's complex medical needs, but I ended up finding a nurse, and I was the reason that family got to go home together for Christmas. That was incredibly rewarding.

Her Interview

Ten minutes with Katie

01What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?

I would tell them that no matter what, you cannot please everyone, so try to not let people's opinions and mean words get to you, because HR can be a very high-stress field where people are just wanting to feel heard, and you might have people take their anger out on you. But I would tell them it just gets easier, and to try to kill them with kindness, and stay strong. You're doing what you can, and the more experience you get under your belt, the easier it gets, too.

02What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?

I think right now, a big challenge is just what's happening in the world, like the economy. I mean, so many companies are doing layoffs and struggling to make ends meet, so I would say just the staffing world is kind of chaos right now, which is probably the biggest challenge. Just being able to give people the compensation that they need to survive in this economy.

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