Intern Kassie Works with the Department of Education!

Thus far my spring internship has proved to be an invaluable experience, providing me the opportunity to gain relevant career skills, and expand my knowledge in the field of human resources (HR). The last three weeks I have been working with the Department of Education's (DOE) amazing Human Resources Director Camille, who also supports seven additional small state agencies. 

Camille mentored me while at DOE, regularly taking time out of her busy schedule to help and guide me through the projects we were working on. She also involved me in numerous executive meetings, including an “A Team Meeting”  comprised of all the directors within the Department of Education, as well as a meeting with the Finance and Business Operations Directors about budgets and funding sources. I felt privileged to be recognized and introduced to the executive staff at Department of Education. In the meetings, I got the chance to experience intellectual dialogue that takes place in a high-level executive meeting from both an organizational standpoint as well as individual departments. 

The projects I have been working on at Department of Education were all interrelated and it was very rewarding and beneficial to see all my projects connect to make one final product. My first project was creating an up-to-date organizational chart. There are almost 300 employees within the DOE. Because this is such a large organization, people are constantly being promoted or hired on, so it is a challenge to keep it current. This project consisted of taking the organizational chart and recreating a descriptive organizational chart for the Department of Education, broken down into each department. The next project I reviewed job description profiles for each position and classification; including clerical, professional, and executive level. This project posed to be a little more challenging since each job description is coming from a different person, therefore a variety of different language usage, formatting, and information. After re-classifying each position, I then made updates to the organizational chart which included the classification from the job descriptions. The conclusion of this project was utilizing this model to create the current salary bands for each classification!

I have also started on a project I will finish up when I rotate back to the DOE. This project consists of updating an Application Selection Document, Hiring Process, and the Fill Position Request Document. It has been awesome to see what all goes into hiring a candidate, along with the work and collaboration the hiring manager and HR professional have to do in order to find the right candidate at the appropriate salary. 

My favorite part the experience with the Department of Education has been the culture. Everyone at the DOE has been very welcoming and friendly. Every day someone would venture over to my cubicle and introduce themselves, ask how I was doing, where I went to school, etc. Not only has the staff been warm and welcoming to me, they also have great relationships with one another. It has been very rewarding to be in a work environment where everyone is truly happy to be there. This experience has not only been rewarding professionally, but has also been a fun experience. 

As my week came to an end, I was definitely not ready to leave, but I am excited to see what the Adjutant General’s Office has in store for me. Not to mention, I get to return to DOE in just 3 short weeks. I’m moving back to SPD as part of my rotational internship program and am going to work with the Hoosier Youth Challenge Academy and assist in creating an internship program similar to the one I am in now! I’m feeling lucky to be selected for this rotational internship program as I can learn about different government agencies, their working environment, best practices, and make new professional connections!