Meet Cindy Elizabeth

I was really excited to see Chris Ponder’s series called Be a Storyteller: Tell Me About Your Career. It’s going to be fun to navigate through the questions and let you learn a little bit about my career.

So, onward, the first question is: Why did you choose your profession and how did you get your foot into the profession?

Life is funny in some ways. I graduated from my undergrad in 2006 with a double major in Organizational Communications and Spanish. Really? What on earth was I going to do with this? I had no idea and believe you me, a career in human resources was probably on the bottom of the list, if at all.

After a few months of sleeping in late and trying to make sense of having graduated from college, I decided to take a temporary job where I work full time now. However, not in HR. I worked our at our research and development center in the dispense engineering department. It was a gas to say the least. I enjoyed it and it was then that I fell in love with the company I work for now, but life had a different path for me: a man. Yeah, perhaps this is going off the beat and path for an HR blog, but it’s an important part of the story.

I left my job to move to California for a man and how dumb that was, I won’t even begin to say, but it was a learning experience as all things in life are and quite frankly, I wouldn’t change it for anything because it means I am here today. Once I fessed up to my mistakes, I found myself back in Minnesota and jobless; again. I quickly called lovely Carol from the temp agency because I was desperate while looking for a job. I took a job manning the front desk in HR for the same company I worked for before. It was pretty boring and not challenging at all, but I liked it. I like the people and learning about HR was fun. An opening in Talent Acquisition came open about three months into my temporary role and I applied and ta da, I was hired!

It’s been three and a half years since I started my career in HR and it’s been a fun ride. I worked in Talent Acquisition for two and a half years and am almost coming up on one year in an Employee Relations role.

I really love learning something new every day, which is what HR does for me; especially in my current role. There’s always a new issue to work through and I constantly have “ah-ha” moments that make the ride worth it.

In all honesty, the best part of my career was when I found my niche on Twitter and even more when I met the lovely Shauna Moerke. She was so encouraging and helpful as I started to navigate the HR Blogging and Twitter community. It’s been fun to find my voice in HR through social media.

And that, is how I found HR.

It’s a new, right? This is the time of year where everyone starts making unattainable goals and saying they are going to change. “I’m going to start running every day!” “Yeah? Well, I’m going to quit eating fast food this year!”

Why not try something simple? For example, I’m going to try to have lunch with one new person each month. Maybe it is someone I meet at a networking event or a co-worker I don’t go much beyond the “hello” with. What I love so much about having an informal lunch with someone I don’t really know is the connection and conversation. It’s amazing what you’ll learn when you step outside your box for just one hour a month.

I hope I didn’t just create an unattainable goal for myself.

In the spirit of change, a co-worker sent me the video below, which I love. It is from the website Simple Truths. I promise, you will find one thing that resonates with you in this three minute video. And if you don’t? Coffee is on me.

Anyone who has interacted with me in the last year professionally (or personally and I yap about work to you) can probably agree with me when I say that I have grown in a very big way.

There are a lot of moving pieces in my life that have contributed to this. Meeting amazing people through blogging and twitter who have helped me see my potential, an ex who made me feel small and in turn, helped me see how crazy I was to allow myself to be small and finally, being involved on a project team at work around changing the culture at my wonderful company.

I used to be this small recent college grad who truly believe I brought no value to the workplace. I was simply there to aid candidates through the application process, answer phones and maybe work on a project from time to time. It sort of makes me sick to my stomach to even write that.

I went through a series of three-day trainings – nine days in total. After these nine days, I stood in front of our Global HR Organization to talk about what Inclusion is. What it is not. What we have learned – why Inclusion is important to me. I stood in front of about 60+ folks in the room and who knows how many on the phone; I stood there and my hands were shaking at my side. “Inclusion is important to me because for a really long time I felt like I didn’t bring any value to the organization.” Pause. “After going through Inclusion training, I learned I am actually really awesome.” I have to say, the strangest moment happened after that. People started clapping. It was awkward. I could feel my face turn red, but I smiled all the way. I think I may have laughed.

So, what happens after you stand in front of the whole HR organization and say those things? Career suicide, maybe? Hardly. I received a lot of phone calls saying they appreciated my honestly and authenticity. I received e-mails telling me how brave and honest I was. The director of our Culture & Inclusion dept. called to tell me that the director in one of our businesses told her that he had tears in his eyes when I told my story.

If anything, I have learned the importance of speaking up and not allowing myself to be small.

So I have continued to allow myself to be big. I have lead brown bag lunch sessions at work on topics around Inclusion, and on Friday, I met with leaders in HR to talk about what needs to change. I left with such a big smile on my face. I might be a Senior HR Assistant at the base line of who I am at work. But guess what? To others I am far more than that. I lead a group of people who are all “higher” in the organization than myself and they constantly tell me I am a great leader.

I can’t stress how important it is to push through the first few years of one’s career with confidence. If I had been where I am now when I started maybe I’d be in a different place but I would not trade this for anything. I have learned so much and it translates into my personal life as well.

I am feeling kind of lucky to be where I am today when I look back at where I was a year ago.

The word “assistant” is in my title at work. I don’t consider myself an admin in any way shape or form. It’s just the luck of the draw to be seen as a “minion” of sorts. But at the end of the day, I help employee through issues, listen to their rants when they need to rant and many other fun things that fall into the employee relations category.

But back to my original sentence. I am an assistant as far as my title is concerned. At work, we have an affinity group for administrative assistants. I got thrown into it because of my title. Yesterday I attended a couple of development sessions that ended up being a wash, but not completely.

Holy CRAP does this group of women need to be empowered. It was sick to sit back and listen to them talk about how they tip toe around their bosses and have ideas and don’t know how to bring them up or feel like they CAN’T. I sat quietly simply because I didn’t want to be rude to the presenter by interrupting but I know one thing:

I will be doing a session or two on empowerment for these folks. In this “day and age” it is not okay to be walked all over or to feel like you can’t say something because of the repercussions of your boss. As I used to say in my younger years: Screw That Noise. If I can lead sessions as their peers, I am hoping they will feel empowered and if they feel empowered, guess what? I bet their engagement level will go up. Boom boom, bam. Two birds; one stone.

I’m excited about approaching the group to do these sessions, and I really hope that I can have the impact on group that I want to have.

And, boom.

I often joke about being a “human punching bag” for a living. I usually say it with a laugh or a smile, but it is true from time to time. I do spend much of my day, trying to find innovative ways to help associates through issues – be it with banks and their mortgages, having issues paying bills, they were overpaid and the list goes on.

I struggle with the fact that HR tends to be in place for management and not the regular “Joe Shmo.” I say this as someone who is not in management, generally sits back and watches events unfold and often isn’t “high ranking” enough to even begin to try to make change in the way people view HR.

That being said, I can tell you what I DO do. I try to create relationships and ease for any person who calls me. Unless they treat me as that human punching bag from the get go. Then I do something completely opposite of who I am as a person – but hey, I have feelings, too. I’ve been treated so poorly by associates (who you know – we work for the SAME COMPANY) that I get tears in my eyes. But, we’re not focusing on those folks today. I try very hard to create a level of trust for each person I work with. It’s important for them to feel like they can trust me and that we are on the same side. The caveat to that often is that I am a huge proponent of the “360-degree vision.” An associate calls and says “my manager did this.” or “my manager said this.” and I get all my notes on the matter and I have to talk to the manager, too.

It is so important as HR Professionals to be getting both sides of the stories. Perhaps lines of communication were crossed, maybe Mr. Manager didn’t really mean for whatever was said to be interpreted the way it was and so forth.

My pal, Keith actually had me thinking on this topic on my way home from a networking event today on Social Media ROI. Folks in the HR industry don’t do a good enough job (in my experience) of trying to advocate for all employees. While I don’t have much pull where I sit in the organization, if I can make just one person a week feel like I am advocating for them, I can rest easy. I have had to personally make changes in the way I interact with associates and the way I conduct business with them as customers because if they don’t feel like HR will advocate and listen to them guess where there are going to go?

Right out the door.

So long, amazing talent. Please, go work for the competitor.

Is that what we want?

If there is anything I have learned in my transition to the HR world from the Staffing world, it is the importance of being authentic. Now, this seems incredibly easy and simple, right?

WRONG.

When I joined the working world, I was a fairly uncertain, naive, idiotic little girl to say the least. I spent all my years of education in private schools. While I would not change this for the world, I had lost out on the “importance of being earnest” so to speak. I spent my years prior to college scratching out eyeballs to be on top. Whether it was being chosen to read my D.A.R.E. speech at the graduation ceremony in fifth grade, beating out all the pretentious snobs for the part in the musical they wanted in seventh grade which inevitably only lead to my life becoming a living hell. It was also doing loads of extra credit in Spanish just because I wanted to and always speaking with my nearly perfect accent or receiving a Superior and then walking around with my chest puffed after at the Minnesota State Music whatever whatever for my solos. In theory, I had lost myself completely in all of that.

College was worse! I was a manager at my job and got to interview and hire, I was involved in everything and I made a solid impact on campus.

I believed my own bullshit.

So the working world was a bit of a disaster at first but eventually I grew into my own. Candidates loved me as did hiring managers.

It wasn’t until recently that I began to understand the importance of making a connection with people in an HR role versus just doing the work. I recently have began having true conversations with my internal customer instead of treating it like a transaction. And you know what? The customer TRUSTS me more and I don’t hate my job as much. My impacts is minimal. I work for a fairly large company, so it’s hard to make huge impact at this point. But let’s talk about that again in three years. Now, beyond creating a relationship, it’s important to be authentic. Why? I have many fake relationships at work. I use my sugary sweet voice and wide smile but I don’t mean it. But overall? I’m an authentic person because that is the person I want to be. Sometimes I make jokes with my customers, “Oh, you’re anal? Hold on one quick second. I need to make note of this and add it to your file.” “….really?” “No, not really, now what can I do for ya?”

I have found work far more enjoyable when I take every phone call and every issue in a “Okay, how can I solve this problem?” or “What can I do to help?” approach versus just wanting the issue to be gone and off my desk. That isn’t to say that I don’t feel that on my off days.

But man, when I get down to what HR really is – I can’t help but smile and think about how much my job and I go together there peanut butter and jelly.

I’ve been pondering the blogosphere and the world of social media in general; why I love it so much and what it does for me personally.

When I went to college, I didn’t take high school with me. I was very specific when I chose my school for two reasons:

1. I wanted a damn good Spanish program.
2. I wanted to “start over.” I did not want my previous life to follow me as I was not a fan of life up until that point.

I lived, laughed and loved my way through college. I was over-involved, never stopped to rest and was always looking for the next “big thing” to pursue and eventually dominate. That being said, I had a lot of friends and acquaintances, but not many people I could depend on to watch out for me. Don’t get me wrong, I have a few friends from college I stay in touch with, but I was in the Fargo/Moorhead area for school. My friends came from all over – different countries, states, and cities. So when college was over, my heart broke.

What do you mean I have to say goodbye to the people who became my second family?

So fast forward to four years post-college. Hello, Twitter. Hello, Blogging. Hello, #Tweetups. The people I have met in the last ten months and the friendships I’ve made have been mind blowing. I tend to get strange looks from friends who don’t utilize social media when I say, “Oh yeah, my really good friend Kate? Yeah, we’ve only known each other for about six months, I’d do anything for her.” Some people get it, some people don’t. But Kate has helped me realize my own potential and myself. My years post-college have been frustration and hard and bumping into social media has saved me.

I get to meet mind-blowing people (and maybe a few think I am mind-blowing, too?) and I learn so much and create friendships with people I would not have meet otherwise. My life would be dramatically different and not as awesome if it weren’t for this world.

Social media helps me create my world.

I took the first job I could get my hands on out of college. Good, bad, that is up in the air. Being that I took my first job out of college, I managed to be pigeon holed as “the admin.” There are parts of being in an admin-type role. I love pulling reports, putting together power-point presentations and always being in the know. I don’t enjoy when working on projects have to assume the role of the “admin” because it is what I do every day.

Why I Take On Extra Projects

• I like to be challenged and use my brain
• I enjoy pushing myself to new levels – whether giving presentations or learning something new
• It’s important to grow current skill-set and grow those I already have

I understand that it seems logical to throw the admin-type things of projects onto me. I GET IT, I’m not stupid. However, I would appreciate being asked versus just having those pieces of projects naturally thrown onto my plate. When this happens, it makes me feel very small. It makes me feel as though I am worth nothing more than simply being an admin. While I do not believe there is anything wrong with being one (I love my admin friends!) – it’s not what I want to be known as and in five years, I hope I am still not here writing about these frustrations.

Writing this just makes me want to throw my head against the window and scream a little. I work very hard and I’ve accomplished a lot of great things and when people look to me as just someone who schedules meetings and writes meeting minutes, it makes me feel smaller than I thought it would.

I don’t want to be seen as a small person – I am much more than people think and assume I am. But fine.

At the end of the day.

“I’m just an admin.”

Sometimes my job makes me question humanity. The things people do and the way people treat each other. Sometimes I wonder why people feel it is okay to disrespect people. No matter the nature. Workplace respect is pretty simple on the surface. Don’t treat each other like crap. Don’t call me a name and I won’t attempt to kick you in the knees. Pretty simple, right?

Apparently not.

When it boils down to it, why do we treat one another like crap? I’m thinking back to junior high when there was a group of girls who used to call me “Sausage.” I became the subject of poems in English class and inside jokes. Yeah it was awesome. In any case – why did those girls do that? I know exactly why. In 7th grade, I got the part in the musical that this other gal wanted. Too bad I sang better than her, right? I mean, come on. It was a freaking singing harp. It wasn’t very glamorous. So she was jealous and banned together with a group of girls to make my life miserable. Fine.

We talk others down to make ourselves feel better. Humans are not inherently good by nature, unfortunately. I have to work at this a lot. I’m actually a very terrible person. I’m mean, I make spiteful jokes, sometimes I complain about my friends. It’s something I’m working on and I admit that I’m not perfect. But there is a line to draw. While I am not perfect, I would never in a million years disrespect someone to the point of wanting to quit their job. Or feeling as though they don’t want to come to work because of how they are being treated.

This is -NOT- okay. Sometimes I want to shake people and say, “Grow the fuck up.” Yeah, I just said fuck on my blog. It felt good. I am so freaking tired of abuse of any nature: verbal, physical, mental – this is 2010, people. Take the stick out of your butt and treat people with respect. It is not hard.

I guess lucky for most people I do work in HR and since I work in HR I usually keep these thoughts to myself because I don’t want to lose my job. But here’s the thing – this all spirals back my passion around culture in the workplace. Treat people right and they will come to work with a smile and work hard to bring results.

Treat them like crap and they will give you crap in return.