It has been a whirlwind of a month interning with the
Indiana State Personnel Department (SPD) at the Indiana Veteran’s Home (IVH).
Over the past five weeks, I have learned a lot about Talent Acquisition, and
the real man power it takes to run a large facility. IVH is a 24 hour facility,
so between nursing, recreation, food service and administration staff there is
a constant need for good, dedicated workers to help maintain the facility and
more importantly the residents’ experience. So to help IVH maintain their five
star rating, we hosted a Job Fair on campus June 9, 2015.
This was a great project for me to get to work on. The event
consisted of information we would provide prospective candidates, décor of the
venue, advertising, and coordination of technological and in person aspects of
the application process. The event posed quite the challenge, which left me very busy.
I helped coordinate social media advertising, and I assisted
Tamara Smith, the IVH Marketing and Admission Director, with the Exponent’s
Twitter campaign. I also created brochures and PowerPoint presentations to
educate the job fair participants about the Indiana Veterans’ Home as well as
the job openings, with compensation and benefits being a large part of that
information. When it comes to state employment, one can see why the state
government is the 3rd largest employer in the state; the holidays,
insurance, generous time accrual, and work/life balance makes the State of
Indiana a great place to work!
We coordinated the event at the Veterans’ Home with our
talent acquisition team in Indianapolis, and got to see some people from my
first day in Indianapolis during orientation. The team of about 10 worked with
applicants the whole day of the job fair and it was a total success. We had 105
attendees during the 8 hours we had it running. So we are busy working on
background checks and employment verifications, TB testing, etc to get everyone
selected hired! I also provided some very exciting analysis with staff’s
experience and pay equity. I have also taken two trips to Indy since my last
blog. An exciting part of the Governor’s internship is the Speaker Series. Last week I
saw Denny Darrow the Chief of Staff for the Indiana State Personnel Dept talk
about the “Invest in Your Health” initiative here in Indiana, and the Director
of Tourism, Mark Newman. It was great to meet these leaders!
Back at IVH we are hiring and evaluating applicants. We have
found some very passionate people that want to help Veterans and give back to
our heroes. I find everyone at IVH feels driven by the residents. The residents
venture around the building so we have quite a few that come visit us in the
office. They have great stories and like to make us laugh; all of my coworkers
are definitely proud to work for them. It is very inspiring to be part of the
facility, IVH’s slogan is the Veterans’ Affairs slogan; “Serving those who
Served.”
I am very excited about the projects here at the Indiana
Veteran’s Home and I also really enjoy the people I have met. The culture they
have created here helps me look at the candidates we have and find the ones
with the same genuine values that will help them serve our veterans.
Media coverage of the event: http://wlfi.com/2015/06/09/indiana-veterans-home-hosts-job-fair/
No comments:
Post a Comment