Bryant & Stratton College Alumni Spotlight: Robert Taylor

It took just sentence to change Robert Taylor’s life.

At 36-years-old he was working for Tyson Foods, hanging live chickens on the processing line. He needed to take a vacation day but the forms in his building had run out. He went to HR to get one and offer to take more back to his building.

The human resources agent blew him off and said he’d print them later.

“He disrespected me. He could have taken 10 steps and given me that form,” Taylor said. “I wanted to change that.”

The next day he heard a commercial for Bryant & Stratton College. He enrolled in the Human Resources Specialist program and changed his entire life.

Taylor graduated about a year later. The HR representative was terminated during the same timeframe. Soon after, Taylor was awarded his job.

“When I was growing up I never was like, hey I want to do HR when I get older. This isn’t something I planned on doing but now that I am, it makes me feel valuable,” Taylor said. “You never how much of a difference you can make or how much of bad influence you can be. I guess he was both a bad and good influence. He made me upset but he also motivated me go to school and do the work.”

Taylor said Bryant & Stratton College helped him work around his schedule to meet his goal.

He worked at Tyson Foods from 5 a.m. to 2 p.m. and took classes from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. After class he headed to the library’s resource room to study and stayed until 11 p.m. Several times the staff there stayed past closing so that Taylor could finish his work.

“I went in there every day to see him whether I needed to or not just because I appreciated him,” Taylor said of the staff.

Taylor was able to work at Tyson Foods HR office to complete his internship. Once he was awarded the full time job after graduation, he set his sights on the next goal, earning an associate degree in Human Resources.

After earning that degree he was promoted and then a year later the company created a training position for Taylor. One more year passed and Taylor was promoted to Human Resource Manager for the entire plant.

He said he would never had achieved his goals without the support of the Bryant & Stratton College staff and professors.

“They pushed me. They saw more in me than I saw in myself,” he said.

Now, Taylor uses that one moment of in time that spurred him to change his life, to also teach his employees to do their best.

“We are not here for ourselves we are customer service for all of our team members, from the lowest hourly worker to the top team managers,” Taylor said. “I respect all my team members and I want them to come to me if they need me.”