Intern Mary takes on the Indiana Department of Child Services and State Department of Health

Greetings!

It has been a busy two weeks! I have seen the ins and outs of human resources in two great agencies during my rotations with Indiana Department of Child Services (DCS), and Indiana State Department of Health (ISDH).  

The first week, I was at DCS. During my time at DCS, I had the opportunity to begin an I-9 audit that consisted of over 3,700 employees. Unfortunately, my time ran out before I had the chance to completely finish the project, but I set up all of the documents to be ready for Ryan, the other intern, to take it on the next week. I really value the importance of I-9's after going through this process. I had to the chance to learn about the E-Verify system, which compares information from an employee's I-9 to data from U.S. government records, to verify an employee is eligible to work in the U.S.

The second week, I was at ISDH, where I observed their on-boarding, sat in on employee relation issues, worked within PeopleSoft, and sat in on a meeting. This was the first time I saw how on-boarding works from the other side of the table. It is a lot of information to take in but is very useful. Later in the week, I got to see how you take someone who has applied for an opportunity all the way through sending the offer letter to the candidate in PeopleSoft. There are a lot of different statuses and steps you must take before the end result, but it is very cool how PeopleSoft works when you automatically generate offer letters. I really enjoyed getting to learn more about PeopleSoft and the different ways you can use it as an aid for many HR tasks. Lastly, the thing that I most enjoyed about the Department of Health was just getting to see what a typical day was like. There is so much going on all the time and I am thankful that they allowed me to get involved with what they are doing and observe some of their daily tasks.

During my time at Indiana State Department of Health, I left for two hours to go to a career fair that was happening nearby. I got to work at the booth with two people from DCS as well as Lindsey and Dawn from the talent acquisition team. I enjoyed seeing what career fairs are like from the recruiter’s standpoint. I got to speak about my experiences thus far from my internship. It made me realize how much I have been exposed to and how much I have gained from the internship.

I can't believe that I am already on week 7 of my internship. I feel like it was not that long ago that I was driving downtown in the snow for my first day. I am so grateful for all of these agencies bringing me in and showing me what they do, and allowing me the chance to always learn something new.

- Mary the Intern