HR management and program analyst: How I got my job and where I'm going

In undergraduate school I went to Georgia State University, and I was a psychology major with a sociology minor. I took a class called Careers in Psychology, and so my professor had someone from each career field in psychology to come speak to us. There was one person that came and spoke, and she was an industrial and organizational psychologist, and she talked to us about how she is the liaison between two different countries and two different corporate offices, and she's the person that works in the middle to make sure they can communicate well. I was sold, I was absolutely sold. From that point, she said they usually take interns that study abroad, and I was terrified to study abroad at first. But then after she said it, for some reason my fears went away. I actually got a scholarship, a full scholarship to study abroad in Argentina. So I got to study the different human rights and all of that great stuff within Argentina, Cordoba and Buenos Aires, and then after that got my masters in industrial and organizational psychology. Industrial and organizational psychology is the study of the workplace, essentially, using psychological theory, statistics, and different methodologies to truly figure out the different challenges in the workplace, to select the right people for the workplace. It's actually a wide range of things that really go into IO, is what we call it for short. So when I was in undergraduate school, after taking the course and finding out I wanted to do IO, I was working at the CDC. I came in through one of our internship programs, the Pathways program, and it's pretty much a pathway into the government for students, recent graduates, and those in graduate school that are interested. So I came in through that program and I worked in one of our offices as an intern, and I really took key notice to who in that office did exactly what I wanted to do. So I talked to my supervisor and I asked her, "Would you mind if I worked on some projects "with that workforce development officer?" just because I felt like I could really hone my skills while also doing what my internship had for me to do. So I found CDC through that route, through the Pathways program, and then since then I've actually gone to a number of different offices to continue honing those skills. The CDC has this amazing office, it's called CDCU, CDC University, in a sense that you can literally go and take a wide breadth of different types of courses, trainings, certifications. So I've truly taken advantage (laughs) of CDCU whether it's taking courses for analytical skills, for statistics, or personal skills, communication tactics, writing with tact via email, leadership development programs that I've signed up for, it just really depends. But CDCU is also a place that I go to if I ever have something I would like to hone. When I came to CDC, and when I came to HR, I still had that innovative spirit in a sense that I was always asking my supervisor, "What can I do, what are those gaps, how can I fill them?" and figuring them out as well on my own. So that's how I've actually acquired a lot of the projects that I have now, in a sense of the managing the leadership development program. And it's crazy, because just two years ago I was in the leadership development program. So managing that, coaching, being able to do the employee viewpoint survey work, there was just a lot of different things, the find-and-apply workshop, that I sought after and that's how those projects kind of got on my plate. I know from the birth of my position to where I am now, it was so important for me to of course know how to say no, but take on multiple projects. That time management piece is important. Don't take on too many projects that you can't handle. But it's still important to say yes. With networking, I would say it's so important with my entire job. The university relations, the relationships that I have to build internal to CDC, external to CDC. If you're in different leadership programs it's always important. So say for instance if you are at a networking event and you haven't done research on someone, and you just meet them randomly, it's always important to just find a connection that you can just continue to build on, and follow up. My long-term aspirations are to continue to place people within the right positions within CDC. I love the experience and everything that I'm learning here at CDC, and I believe I would like to take it a step further and actually develop assessments, whether it's cognitive ability, personality, structured interview guides, situational judgment tests, that is what makes me excited. So I actually see myself being a coach for high-potential leaders. I feel like I've had a great breadth of mentors throughout my experience, and I want to continue that but more in a high-potential, formal fashion. So I would like to be a coach and sit down and talk to high-potentials that are in a fairly younger age range, and coach them on what the professional skills are they should use, being able to have an innovative spirit, different things like that.