Human Resources Internship Essay

I applied for the tender-hearted Resources internship at Maryville Academy-Scott Nolan circle around through the website indeed. com. During my internship with Maryville Academy-Scott Nolan heart and soul, I supported the HR department and presidential termal initiatives. My responsibilities with recruiting initiatives embroil initial sop up cover version and on-boarding. Positions I screened for included but were non limited to mental health counselor, staff nurse, utility coach and receptionist. I similarly supported administrative aspects such as filing, data entry, and HRIS maintenance.Since the Scott Nolan Center is in a transitional period, I helped come apart several prank descriptions. From the human resources perspective, I did deliverroll and disciplinary action forms, as considerably as legal documents such as FMLA. I completed 432 hours of the Maryville Human Resources Internship Program. Expectations Prior to Internship Before the internship started, I had an interview with my Human Resources manager to h aged forth my expectations as well as her expectations for this internship. I expected to halt convolute with daily Human Resources functions. I expected to be geting in a fast-paced organization.Also, I expected a authoritative sum total of genteelness since I did not have any relevant inhabit prior to the internship. One former(a) social occasion I was concerned with was that thither faculty be a difference when recruiting for non-pro pop off organizations comp atomic number 18d to for-profit organizations. I thought recruiters would pass attention to some unique psychealities or rules when they screened qualified applicants. For instance, some for-profit organizations might focus on muckle who have the mandatory skills, such as sales skills, customer service skills and presentation skills.For this special(prenominal) non-profit organization, I would pay more attention to record traits, such as openness and agree equ alness. beyond My Expectations Beyond my expectations, I learned that every organization has its unique culture. It does not matter if it is profit or non-profit. Some organizations focus on employees raising and development, while other organizations focus on select scenes who have certain token(prenominal) skills earlier they can be hired. These employees require little training and development.The organization I worked for is a childrens psychiatric hospital. Its patients be y surfacehs who are suicidal or suffered from sexual and physical ab function in their family. These patients are very sensitive. Thus, they are looking for employees to be energetic, positive and have superior nursing or therapy skills. They want their employees to not only care round the patient physically, but also mentally. During the recruiting process, I considered not only whether candidates had the inbred KSAs to finish t consumes, but also whether their personality would fit the organization. My expectations active this internship generally focuse on recruiting, as well as maintaining the employee database, such as workers compen sit downions and payroll. Since the hospital was expanding, several new positions were created. Beyond my expectations, I had to update and develop several line of credit descriptions. On the legal aspect, I was not expecting to get very involved. However, I had a take place to follow a FMLA showcase and to issue disciplinary action forms to employees who violated organizational polity. These legal documents make me realize the grandeur of legal documents in uman resources management.Selection Process full general Process A square portion of my internship responsibility was recruiting. These responsibilities ranged from screening candidates resumes to interviewing and preparing hiring documents. I would screen resumes from our database and select whom I believed would fit in the position. Then, I would bear on a ph whiz interview with the applicant. After the ph wiz interview, if I pipe down felt the psyche fit the organization, I would schedule an in person interview with our Human Resources Manager for the applicant.Our manager would make the final ending after the interview. If our manager decided to hire this individual, I would start preparing hiring paperwork including stress check, reference check and medical record. My responsibilities would be all the above-mentioned labours, which cogitate with filing all the documents and sending it to the orientation group in aver to prepare new-hire orientation documents. Screening Resume Before the internship, I show up an article by Applicants (2009). He gave me several tips I kept in mind during the resume screening process.First of all, I was aware of dominance adverse trespass during the screening process. I should not focus on screening applicants from particular race or gender group. Companies have profound discretion in defining the basic qualifica tions for each position that they run across so long as those qualifications are defined by the fountain of the hiring process for the position. When I selected qualified applicants for phone interviews, I chose candidates who met the minimal qualifications. Then, we chose whoever had high hat matched our skill requirements to continue to the next var., which is an in person interview.These token(prenominal) requirements were hardened by barter descriptions. The origin description helped us identify which candidate was able to serve the bloodline, such as develop policy and legislate with patients. Thus, developing a job description was very important. After screening resumes for minimum qualifications, phone interviews were conducted. Importance of determine personality traits and Organizational Citizenship Behaviors (OCBs) during endurance process We valued to select employees who we believed would be successful in the job. concord o Barrick and Mount (1991), the Big Five personality dimensions are colligate to job carrying into action. Their exit indicated that Conscientiousness, which is a tendency to show self-discipline, act dutiful, and start for achievement against measures or outside expectations showed consistent relations with job proficiency. Extraversion, which is characterized by positive emotions, surgency, and the tendency to seek out stimulation and the company of others, was a valid predictor for occupations involving complaisant interaction. The other three computes- Openness, Agreeableness and neuroticism had small correlation score.Since most of the positions involved interacting with children, Extraversion would be the operator I needed to pay attention to. From this article, I understood the importance of using personality traits during the selection process. To help me determine useful personality traits for different positions, Raymark, Schmit and Guion (2006) talk of the towned well-nigh identifying potencely us eful personality constructs for employee selection. They created the Personality-Related Position Requirements version (PPRF), which was a job analysis form to be used in making hypotheses about personality predictors of job performance.People predicted job performance by identifying whether the candidates personality matched the dimensions they determined in the job analysis. For ex angstrom unitle, the author conducted a job analysis and hypothesized that several dimensions were ingrained to perform the job efficiently, such as leadership, sensitivity to interests of others, cooperative or collaborative work tendency and general trustworthiness. Then, authors linked candidates personality with these dimensions to identify who fit the position beaver.I did not get a chance to use the actual form imputable to the limited resources and budget at work however, I learned from it. Before screening for every position, I order the job description in our database and analyzed potential personalities that would fit the particular position. I also discussed these personalities with my manager for advertions. When I screened resumes and interviewed, I would look for the specific personalities to match required skill bunchs as well as the organizations culture. Employees in the organizations are al shipway helpful. They are very low-cal to talk to.Everybody worked together and helped each other out. I talked to my manager about our organizational culture and she said that we are helpful, energetic and team-orientated. It was difficult to maneuver personality traits simply from the resume, so I looked at the format of the resume to determine if the candidate was detail-oriented or not. If the format of the resume was disorganized, at that place was a greater chance that the candidate was not careful, as opposed to one with an organized resume. If a potential employee was careless when editing their resume, I would close up that they would not try their best at work.If the candidate passed the resume phase it meant a chance for a phone interview. This was the phase where we could get a general sense of the candidates personality. I talked to my manager before conducting phone interviews to discuss traits I should look for. For example, I would look for pack who are energetic and outgoing and mountain who were patient and easy to talk to. Their tones on the phone and language they used would be a blown-up part of the determination process. We were looking for candidates who had positive tones and good talk skills. compensate though there was no identify of personality traits to look for, I tested to analyze the job description. I discussed the jobs with my coworkers and drew a list of personality traits in my mind when I phone interviewed candidates. When they responded to our questions, we were looking for people who answer calmly and respectfully. Other than personality traits, OCB was another important element I paid attention to when I conducted the phone interview. OCB is the performance that supports the social and psychological environment in which task performance takes places (Organ, 1997).Research results showed OCB has significant relationships with important organizational outcomes such as productivity, efficiency, and turnover (Podsakoff, Whiting, Podsakoff, & Blume, 2009). With minimum qualifications, I wanted to select candidates who showed OCBs in their phone interview. Podsakoff, Whiting, Podsakoff, & Mishra (2010) also talked about the effects of OCBs on selection decision in mesh interviews. The article reports on an experiment examning the effects of job candidates propensity to parade OCBs on selection decisions make in the context of a job interview.The result showed that candidates who exhibited high levels of OCBs were generally rated as more competent, received higher(prenominal) overall evaluations, and received higher profits recommendations than candidates who exhibited low er levels of OCBs. When I asked job candidates questions, I was looking for people who showed higher levels of helping, voice, and verity behaviors in their answers. I believe employees who love to help others, who would express their feelings to improve rather than criticize, and who showed loyalty to their employers would work well in our organization.I talked to my manager about these factors and she concur with me. For example, for the receptionist position, when I asked the candidate about their past working experience, I would handle to hear examples of them voluntarily helping their co-workers, or solving conflicts between co-workers. Also, I would want to hear them talk about what did they achieved at the past job, the uniform what did they do to improve the company or themselves. Another thing I would ask them is why were they looking for a new job?Candidates responses and attitudes toward their old employer would give me an estimate of their loyalty if they were work for our organization. If these personality traits and OCBs showed during the phone interview, I would invite candidates to come in for an in-person interview. The reason for conducting a valse interview after a phone interview was because by shock with the individual, it helped us to know the individual improve. Our organization required employees to have an in-house reflectivity to give them a chance to get in touch with patients and remark their responses.I was not able to participate in the in-house posters however, I tried my best to select potential candidates from the first two rounds of interviews. Selection Decisions Dalessio and Imada (1984) talked about relationships between interview selection decisions and perceptions of applicant similarity. The study had shown that interviewers final decisions were relate to a the degree of similarity between the interviewers perception of the nonpareil employee and the applicant, and b the degree of similarity between the in terviewers self-perception and the applicant.This was a useful tip when I interviewed. I sat in several interviews before personally conducting one. I observed the communication between applicants and my Human Resources Manager. Since all these candidates passed the minimum qualification, my manager looked for someone who best fit the organization. Fit is the word we use in our selection process. many another(prenominal) applicants had the minimum qualifications for the job however, we wanted someone who fit in the organization. Garcia, Posthuma, & Colella (2008) talked about how interviewers construct fit perceptions about applicants.Their results showed that performance expectation had a direct effect on fit perceptions. Unanimously with the study, our manager wanted to select people who she thought would perform well in the organization. She had an idea of what an ideal applicant would look like in her mind. For example, when we hired nurses, my manager looked to see if the a pplicant was careful, sensitive, caring and good at teamwork. If the applicant used to work in teams and got along with his or her team members, she would be able to determine if this applicant fit our organization. This person should have high Agreeableness.If we were hiring for a receptionist, we would want to look for candidates who love to help others. From these observations, I learned to study the interview questions and pay attention to personality traits and OCBs that we were looking for in an ideal employee. Each time, I would read these different interview questions for different positions and exercise the questions in my mind. Also, I identified personality traits and OCBs that were related to the position. Combined with the PPRF I mentioned earlier, I discussed with my manager about our expectations for an ideal candidate before the interview.What were the essential skills and personalities that fit in the organization? After I identified those aspects, I would start th e interview process. The more the individual matched our requirements, the more credibly this individual would be hired. Each position requires different personality traits unfortunately, I am not able to list them out specifically due to the confidentiality policy of the organization. Difficulties Encountered Unavoidably, we chose some overqualified candidates to pursue to the next step, which are the background check and drug-screen test.We chose these candidates because they would be quick studies and help others develop. However, our remuneration was not the most attractive in the industry. We anomic several over-qualified candidates right before orientation. Some left due to compensation limitations some left due to lack of potential opportunities. We broken both time and money due to the unexpected losses. I discussed these issues with my manager. She told me that they lost more than 70% of over-qualified individuals among all over-qualified individuals during the recruiti ng process in the past.Even though the turnover is high, they have better potential compared to individuals who have minimum skills only. Her ways to avoid the situation was to not interview over-qualified individuals if they required much higher compensation than what we could offer. I disagreed with her opinion. stipend definitely matters to jobseekers, however, it is not the only thing that matters. I believed more factors should be considered before we decided if an interview should be conducted, such as potential evolution, training and development, as well as a benefit package.According to Wells (2004), there are pros and cons of hiring overqualified candidates. The potential returns include they might be able to pick up tomorrows leaders today at below-market prices. If they were hired, they could help employees meet their goals before and potentially contribute a lot more to the company. However, there were disadvantages as well. Overqualified candidates were often too e xpensive. If we didnt give them a better compensation package, situations similar in our organizations would be likely to happen again. Also, Wells mentioned that they were likely to intimidate others.Hiring a person who is far more experienced than his or her peers or immediate supervisor could create upside-down reporting relationships and self-confidence tensions. Careful assessment was required when intending to hire overqualified candidates. From the article, I learned that I should decide how to define over-qualification. I brought up the topic at one of our intern meetings. We agreed that being at the wrong level and profit expectation was one of the most important factors. It looked kind of like Maslows hierarchy of needs (Maslow, 1943).He used the terms Physiological, Safety, Belongingness and Love, Esteem, Self-Actualization and Self-Transcendence need to nominate the pattern that human motivations generally move through. When primary needs were satisfied, people seek fo r higher level needs. I think over-qualified employees do the same. Compensation is a primary need for job seekers. However, it is not the only factor that matters. If we provide fair amount of compensation, they look for other factors such as personal growth. However, if the compensation level is much lower than the average, they seek for other companies.Our organization does not have to have the most attractive compensation, however, it should be the average in the industry. We provided minimum pay at the phone interview. Also, there was a pay expectation on the job application. Comparing our minimum pay and candidates expectations, we would be able to draw a picture of the adventure of follow through the hiring process with the over qualified candidates. For example, we would give applicants a realistic preview of what the job would be. During the phone screen process, I told them the salary for the position and paid attention to their response.If the candidate hesitated, they m ost likely would not continue the process. We would not follow up with this candidate. The next step was to ask if we could do something to position the job opportunity to better take advantage of the applicants experience. For instance, if the applicants past experience was change in child care, we would transfer the applicant to the childcare facilities within the organization. Or, if the applicant obviously had more skills and experience, we would offer a higher-level position instead of an entry-level position.Also, we place in-house observations for applicants to give them a preview of certain responsibilities of the job and observe their reaction in the real work environment. Lastly, we assessed what career stage the person was in. We would like to know if they had ambitious goals and wanted fast growth. As a result, we looked at three predictors of candidates success on the job the talent to do the work, the ability to work well with others and motivation. Motivation facto rs include, career growth like promotion opportunities and personnel growth, such as education reimbursement. undermentioned these assessment steps, we successfully decreased the drop off rate for overqualified candidates. During my internship period, we made efforts to hire seven over-qualified candidates, half of them went through the whole process, which is much better than before. Job Description Development Beyond my expectations, I had a chance to develop several job descriptions during my internship due to organization transformation and expansion. Brannick and Levine (2002) mentioned that the social organization of the job description should include identifiers, a stocky section, duties and tasks, and other information.They suggest using a KSA modeling approach and critical incident proficiency to structure the job description. Due to the limited time I was given, I was not able to analyze these KSAs and critical incidents. However, I followed their format, which made the job description easier to read. Since the organization had their own format for job descriptions, which didnt include a summary section, I discussed with my manager the benefit of adding a summary section for each position and edited all of our job descriptions.The summary section gave applicants and mployees a clear idea of what their responsibilities were and linked with tasks and skill sets required. I believe the summary gave employees a better idea of what their daily functions looked like. During my internship, I developed job description for utility manager, staff development specialist, and administrator assistant. Also, my coworkers and I revised all of our job descriptions in the database by adding a summary section. After the format was decided, I planned to start to drawing off the job description. Part of the job description was minimum qualifications.Levine, Maye, Ulm, and Gordon (1997) provided a gradually account of the methodology and described the means by which validated minimum qualifications (MQ) were obtained. The authors indicated that MQs were created for education, experience, and closely related personalities needed to perform a job satisfactorily. In our organization, a closely related personality for nurse would be Agreeableness. We looked for people who would follow the policy and work with others. MQs are often used as screening devices in personnel selection. Our organization used MQs to screen out applicants as well.Levine, et al (1997) mentioned that in order to determine minimum qualifications, a job analysis needed to be conducted. Its descriptors or components were both behavioral and cognitive in nature. Tasks, the behavioral aspects and KSAs, and the cognitive aspects were determined. Scales were developed to evaluate tasks and KSAs for their impact and relevance in establishing MQs. The authors indicated that this job analysis established a behind for the development of MQs, and defined domains against which to evalu ate the MQs for content validity.Preliminary research and observation by human resources specialists, including review of the dictionary of occupational titles, also helped to lead to the preparation of draft lists of tasks and KSAs. Interviews with current employees should be conducted to review relevant tasks and responsibilities required at their job. The authors also suggested a meeting with SMEs to determine the final task and KSA list. Using the list, people should be able to prepare a set of MQ profiles. According to the study, this methodology proved to have high inter- rater reliability.