SPD Welcomes Intern Shae!

As I walked across the stage at graduation, a moment of fear rushed over me. I began wondering if I had learned enough to become an HR professional. Did I know all of the current recruiting laws in place? Furthermore, am I able to regurgitate them when a colleague askes me? I was fairly certain, but not totally sure. I just graduated from the Kelley School of Business with a double major in Human Resource Management and Management. I better know what I’m doing! All of the stakeholders of IUPUI, Kelley School of Business, and the HR program depended on me being qualified to have my name on that piece of paper. And now all the stakeholders for the Indiana State Government.  I was feeling the pressure.

After sitting in my role for the past two weeks as a Human Resources Intern for the Governor’s Summer Internship Program, my fears started to subside. The wonderful onboarding routine made me feel like part of the State Personnel Department family. While job shadowing the Employee Relations unit, I knew exactly what Executive Order 00011246 meant when brought up in conversation. I was fascinated by their affirmative action plan for each agency within state government. I wanted to hear details for each ongoing investigation. My 15 minute ‘Meet & Greets’ turned into an hour. I am a sponge for the information with plenty of follow up questions and these executives were willing to speak with me.  I was having stimulating conversations with the staff attorney and it was inspiring. The past four years were worth it! I had the vocab, engaging questions, and a fellow intern, Payton, with whom to experience it all. We were on fire. The State Personnel Department gave me the platform to use the intelligence that I had absorbed.

As I sit here, working on projects, relaxed from yoga in the State Library, I am certain that this was the perfect internship for me. Now, as for what I have learned during my time with SPD. To know it all, you will have to stay tuned each blog.

During each meet and greet, my colleagues left me with some insight into the professional HR world. I would like to share some paraphrased accounts of them with you.

1. Break the HR Stigma

Other agencies can see Human Resources as the bad guy, the enforcer. You, as an HR professional, will have to combat that paradigm. You need to be able to convince them to see your way. You need to be able to influence. You are now an influencer! Have the mentality of a flipped pyramid with HR at the bottom; we work for them. All for one, and one for all! We are a family. Without them, we would not be here.

I am here to say, as a new HR professional, I am here for you. For more words of wisdom I have gained these past weeks, look for my blogs bi- weekly! Stay with us. 

Shae 

Intern Ryan Lattimore Experiences Adjutant General's Office (AGO) & Says Farwell

Greetings,

A few weeks ago, I was shipped out to the Adjutant Generals Office (AGO), which happens to be my favorite agency at the State of Indiana. On my first day, I arrived at AGO and met with April, the HR Generalist. After meeting the staff, we jumped in the car and headed to Terre Haute to help our staff better understand their healthcare opportunities. The base we arrived at was Indiana Air National Guard. I had the opportunity to meet with multiple state employees and answer their healthcare questions to the best of my knowledge. I also received the opportunity to tour the grounds and see the history of the Indiana Air National Guard.

On my second day at AGO, we took a trip down to the Muscatatuck Urban Training Center (MUTC) and Atterbury. At Muscatatuck, I met with a large group of employees and handed out all sorts of HumanaVitality goodies to the staff. Aside from answering questions about HumanaVitality and our silver status portal, I also had an opportunity to tour the campsite. This area was huge! The entire site was set up to mimic international buildings as a way to prepare troops before being shipped overseas. Their sites ranged from an underwater city, subway station, a four story hospital, and much more. Many of these areas were marked with red flags, signaling that a live drill was occurring on that particular site. After finishing up at Muscatatuck, we drove directly to Camp Atterbury. Since we were running short on time, we took a tour the facility and meet some key staff members. My favorite part of Atterbury was their gun range. They had one of the largest ranges I have ever seen, especially the sniper ranges.

On my last day, we took a trip to the Hoosier Youth Challenge Academy (HYCA). This was extremely exciting for me because my first project with the State Personnel Department included a climate survey from HYCA. It was great to see the facility in person and have the opportunity to see our potential progress first hand! By this time, I was practically fluent with HumanaVitality. I enjoyed visiting all four facilities because I got out of my comfort zone. I was interacting in an environment that was fresh and abstract.

After finishing my final agency, I returned back to Department of Health (ISDH) and State Personnel Department (SPD) for a few weeks. At ISDH, I had the chance to view the results of my Family Medical Leave (FML) Survey that I developed for their supervisors. In addition to analyzing the results, I developed a workshop for the supervisors to develop the areas they seemed to be struggling in. Back at SPD, I was assigned a project from our Deputy Director Stefanie. My project consisted of integrating SPD data into an efficient and consistent metrics dashboard. 

As much as I hate to say it, my internship has finally come to an end. I have had a remarkable experience working for the State of Indiana. I never imagined myself gaining this extensive amount of experience in just three months. I have practically quadrupled my network connections and gained many friendships along the way. To say the least, it’s going to feel odd not driving to work every morning. I would like to thank everyone at the State of Indiana who has taken time out of their busy schedules to work with me and keep me engaged. Each individual is responsible for my progression through personal and professional development. I say my final farewell as I continue my career path into my senior year at IUPUI. Thank you for this wonderful opportunity.

Ryan Lattimore

HR Intern

Indiana State Personnel 

Farewell Intern Mary

As I am wrapping up my internship at the state, I am so thankful for all of the experiences that I have had. I am so grateful for all of the agencies taking me in and letting me learn about the things they do and the problems that they face.

A special thanks to the talent acquisition team: Thank you for taking me in and allowing me to grow as an HR professional. I valued my weeks in W161 because I knew that you were all people I could trust and would walk me through any issues I had. I will miss all of the talks between the cubicles, going to lunches on Friday, and just being able to have other people to bounce ideas off of.

Dawn: I don't even know where to start. Just to put it simply, I am so grateful that you were my mentor during this internship. Thank you for always believing in me and pushing me to try new things. I know I probably asked you way too many questions, but you were always willing to help me and set other things aside to take on my problem first.

Ryan the Intern, Dawn the Intern Mentor, and Me!

Also, a special thanks to all of the agencies that took me in:

Pendleton, Dept of Corrections (DOC): As this was my first rotation, I wasn't really sure what to expect at first. Thank you to the whole HR team for trusting in me to get things done and allow for me to take things on with as little guidance as possible.

Indiana School for the Blind and Visually Impaired (ISBVI): Heather, thank you so much for talking through things with me and always involving me on the issues that were brought up to you. I loved job shadowing you, learning about the problems you face and your path within HR. Because of you, I began to actually consider becoming a generalist.

Dept of Child Services (DCS): I was allowed to take on a critical function of HR. Thank you for allowing me to sit in and see the importance of an I9 for an agency. It was also very fun to learn more about what each person within your HR department did.

Department of Health(ISDH):  I was able to shadow their HR team. I really enjoyed being able to sit in on some of the employee relation issues. Jon allowed me to be involved in many of his daily problems that he faced and included me on many discussions that happened around resolving these issues.

Adjutant General’s Office (AGO): During my time at AGO I got to complete my coolest project. I was assigned to do a job competency project on three of the positions they have. April and Julie gave me all of the necessary documents and I just ran with it. Every now and then I would go to them for suggestions and to ensure that I was doing things correctly, but they fully trusted my work and opinion. I also had the privilege of job shadowing April during our HumanaVitality tour. She told me about her job and what makes it unique because of her agency. I also got to see some of the barriers that she faces while we were at the different locations.

This opportunity is so beneficial to any student considering going into HR. I don't think I could express that enough. This opportunity with the State has been more than I ever expected it to be. I have gotten to take the things that I have learned in the classroom and see how they are applied in different HR settings. The best part of this internship is the rotational aspect. As an intern you are put into a different agency on certain weeks. Within that week you can learn about the different problems they take on, see the different culture and learn varying HR practices. This experience has been so unique and allows college students to really grow and gain some professional experience. I am so thankful for all of SPD, for allowing me this opportunity.

Signing Off

Mary the Intern

Intern Ryan takes on IN State Dept of Health & Projects with Talent Acquisition

A few weeks ago, I explored another unique agency, the Indiana State Department of Health (ISDH), as a Human Resource (HR) Intern with the Indiana State Personnel Department. Upon arrival, I was introduced to an extremely welcoming HR team: Brian, John and Kim.

My first project involved developing a survey for ISDH supervisors, which assessed their understanding and compliance with Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA). Over the course of the week, our team continued to tweak the survey until it was ready to be distributed. This gave me a great opportunity to not only work on my design and development skills, but also to gain a better understanding of FMLA and how it affects an agency.

In addition, I was tasked with taking an email regarding an upcoming “Lunch and Learn” for our Wellness Program, and transforming it into something that would motivate ISDH employees to attend. I took this email and created a flyer that not only provided the essential information, but also was appealing and would grab the reader’s attention. I appreciated the opportunity to utilize my creativity!

The next week, I was partnered with my good friend Caitlin in Talent Acquisition. She tasked me with “resume mining” for Nurse Practitioners as part of a Strategic Staffing Plan.  Utilizing internal and external resources, I used my best judgement to provide potential candidates that displayed the desired education, experience and background.  On top of this, I was given a list of Indiana colleges/universities to contact about starting/strengthening a networking relationship with the State of Indiana. I researched the schools to verify they were accredited and provided their Careers Services departments with information about our nursing opportunities to disseminate to their students and alumni.  (Nursing Careers with the State of Indiana)

After finishing up my work with Caitlin, Mary (the other intern) and I partnered together to accomplish a huge list of small tasks assigned by all members of Talent Acquisition. This included anything from making calls or researching programs, to writing documentation. Essentially, this was designed to mimic “a day in the life of a Recruitment Consultant.” By the end of the day, Mary and I had completed almost all of the extra projects that our consultants needed to get done. Next week I will be heading over to the Adjutant Generals Office (AGO). I am extremely excited to see what they have to offer!

If you are interested in working for the State of Indiana, click this link: Careers.IN.gov

Until next time…

Ryan Lattimore

HR Intern

Indiana State Personnel Department 

Intern Mary takes on AGO & Humana Vitality

Greetings,

These past few weeks have flown by! I can't believe that I am starting the 11th week of my internship. With that being said, these past two weeks have been so exciting! I got to work closely with the embedded human resources team within the Indiana Adjutant General's Office (AGO), which is responsible for the Indiana National Guard. 

The first week, I had the opportunity to take on my first competency project. I looked into four positions and reviewed the discovery sessions that were previously completed.  The objective of the discovery sessions was to find the best outcomes or goals for each position. I gathered all of the data from the discovery session and tried to see what duties employees said they were doing that aligned with the job description. Once I made these parallels, I was able to identify things that potentially may need to be changed on the job description or if an employee was performing duties that should be performed by another position. From the data that I aggregated, I was then able to find competencies that best fit each position. This was one of the coolest experiences I have had thus far. It was my task to draw conclusions from the information that was provided to me. The team allowed me to run with what I thought would be best and present my conclusions. In the end, I was very happy to see that some of the competencies had overlapped with competencies they had selected for those positions in years past. 

Last week, I traveled with April, the AGO HR Director, to different military locations to aid employees with engaging in the state’s wellness program. While we were at these locations, we had the chance to meet with employees and discuss their health insurance options, as well as what they can do to reach silver status within our wellness portal. This process was very interesting because there were different barriers at different locations. It forced us to be strategic with how we were reaching out to individuals to spread the word. While we were at these unique locations, I also had the opportunity to tour the grounds. This was the first time I had ever been to a military base. It was very cool how each base was different. I got to tour three different armories, the Hoosier Youth Challenge Academy, and an air base. 

These past two weeks were filled with so many unique experiences. I am so thankful for the AGO Human Resource Team and the projects they prepared. They were so unique and allowed me to see a different side of Human Resources. 

-Mary the Intern