Aaron's Experience with the Department of Natural Resources

Hello again everyone.  For the past two weeks of my internship with the State Personnel Department I have been working with the Department of Natural Resources (DNR).  These two weeks have flown by and I have learned a lot and have been able to work on some great projects.

One of the biggest projects I have been working on is a succession plan for the Department of Water in DNR.  The goal of this succession plan is to have employees trained and ready to step into a bigger role when the incumbent of that role steps down.  In this project, I have gone through job descriptions to figure out which job duties would be considered highly important to keep that job running smoothly.  For jobs that I could not get job descriptions for, the Director and Assistant Director positions, I met the current job incumbents to find out what their most critical job duties are. Another project I have worked on is comparing engineer compensation rates across DNR, Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT), and Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM).  The compensation report shows me all of the engineer’s compensation across the three different agencies.  This was to judge how a DNR engineer is paid when compared to INDOT and IDEM engineers. 

I have also been creating a set of questions for an interview, trying to use as many behaviorally based questions as I can, to fill a vacancy in a nursery and created a survey to figure out whether an employee is interested in career advancement.  One other project I have worked on is contacting INDOT to learn about their training paths for engineers to advance in their careers.  They have a career path that leads engineers from engineer in training (EIT) to professional engineer (PE). Additionally, I was able to go on a DNR site visit to a state park.  We went to Fort Harrison to review some HR administrative items.

I have enjoyed my time spent here in DNR.  Just as I did with my time spent with talent acquisition, I feel like I have learned so much and gained so much experience.  For the next few weeks, I will be working with the Family and Social Services Administration (FSSA). I am looking forward to this time to gain even more knowledge and experience.