Thursday, February 27, 2014

Whitney works with the Small Agencies Division

For the past two weeks I have been in the Small Agencies Division and working alongside one of the HR Generalists. This particular Generalist works with several small agencies such as the Department of Administration, Hoosier Lottery, Lieutenant Governor’s Office, Department of Agriculture, and many more. She has been a great mentor and fun person to work with.  I have received a lot of good direction from her on my projects the past two weeks.


During my time with the Small Agencies Division, my projects have included: completing employment verifications, researching personnel files and verifying current employees within PeopleSoft. My other project was working on record retention and maintenance for the Department of Administration. All of these projects have given me a lot of exposure to the different things that an HR Generalist may deal with on a daily to weekly basis. The research project of personnel files was a very valuable project for me because of the amount of time I got to spend working in PeopleSoft. I am beginning to feel more comfortable navigating through this system. I have gained a lot of insight on the importance of record retention and documentation of employees as well. I have enjoyed my time working with the Small Agencies Division and I am looking forward to my next rotation.

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Intern Whitney goes to ISDH!

Hi Everyone! For the last two weeks I have been working with the HR team embedded within the Indiana State Department of Health (ISDH). My project for this agency has been communicating with the different departments to collect all job descriptions of ISDH employees. I then take the job descriptions I receive and divide them accordingly into separate folders on a shared file. The goal of this project is to begin the process of having all job descriptions readily available online. By putting them into a shared file, hiring managers and HR will be able to access the job descriptions easily without having to search or email each other for this information. Going along with Governor Pence’s “Good to Great Plan”, this is another way the state is trying to make things faster, friendlier, and more accessible to state employees. I have just started the process of collecting the job descriptions but this project will continue to be worked on by others going forward. Their goal is to have this done by 2015. This project has been very tedious and challenging at times but I have learned a lot from it. I have learned how to better communicate with people through email. When there are several people who have to be involved to make a project work, I have learned that communication, persistence, deadlines, and check-ins work best (at least for this project). It has been a great learning experience.

This morning I was given a project of a completing a background check on a final candidate for hire. I did the employment verification, professional reference verification, and education verification. I made phone calls to verify the employment and professional references. Then I called and emailed the candidate for her transcripts to confirm her education. Finally, I initiated a background check in PeopleSoft. It was awesome being given this responsibility. It’s a simple process but important to any organization. Getting to do it on my own and learning through experience rather than just watching or reading was great.


The past two weeks at the ISDH have been a lot of work and I have learned a lot! It has also been a lot of fun. I feel I have gained some great knowledge and experience through this time. The HR team was great to work with! I can’t wait for my next rotation with the Field Operations division of the State Personnel Department. 

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Meet Our New Intern Whitney!

Hi Everyone! My name is Whitney Bryan and I am the spring intern for the Indiana State Personnel Department. I hope you will enjoy reading my blogs over the next several months. I am a senior at the Kelley School of Business in Indianapolis and I will be graduating this May (Yay!) with Bachelor’s Degrees in Human Resources, Management, and International Studies. I would love to work in HR and I have a strong interest in working for the state, so this internship is a great opportunity to explore what it would be like to work for the state. I was first exposed to the SPD when Heather Whitaker came to a business class of mine. I thought her job sounded really interesting and I was intrigued by the idea of having many HR departments working together to serve other entities to reach an overall goal. The state does just this; HR is working to deliver integrated services effectively to meet the goals of the state’s different agencies. I heard of this internship through one of my professors at school and through an informational interview I had with Heather. Heather and my professor both encouraged me to apply for this internship and told me that it would be a great experience. Heather told me an overview of the internship and I really liked the value this internship offers in giving their interns lots of experience with different agencies and the amount of “hands on” work. I am grateful for the opportunity of this internship because I know it is going to be so valuable.

Today is my second day here at the SPD and so far I have been very impressed with what this internship has to hold for me. I have a schedule for the course of this internship and it involves rotating into different divisions and some job shadowing opportunities. This internship is very exciting and fast moving which I like. I look forward to rotating with the different divisions and seeing many different perspectives of HR. Today I had a day full of meet and greets. I met several directors from different divisions and learned a little more about how the SPD works. One really interesting part of the state is the idea of centralized HR. All HR positions are controlled here and the different HR directors and generalists work for all the different agencies in the state. I think this is a really neat way to handle all of the agencies’ HR needs and I like the feeling of so many HR people working together to meet the needs of the state and agencies.

I am really looking forward to this internship. I know I am going to get a lot of exposure and will gain a lot of experience. I’m excited for the opportunity to work with so many different people and work with the many different divisions. I have high expectations for this internship and I know I will not be disappointed. So far, everything has been exciting and above my expectations. Stay tuned to read and follow my journey in this internship. I know I am going to learn a lot and I hope you can learn something too from my experience!