Internship Experiences

Lincoln Financial Group

Talent Management Intern

HR Technology Intern

From beginning of December 2013 until beginning of May 2014 I worked within the HR Technology team at Lincoln. Throughout this internship, I was exposed to areas of project management, e-learning, and data management. Below is a short list of the lessons I learned along the way.

Internal Company Changes

Probably the least expected part of my experience was a shift in the company to establish a formal and dedicated HR Technology team. While not affecting me too much directly, I was able to observe a cultural blend as silos started to merge into a singular task force. This was a big learning opportunity because I was able to better understand how to create consistency. Consistency was done by creating standard operating procedures for each member of the newly formed team to follow. This meant new forms had to be generated, people had to be training and exposed to the new processes, and a single person had to manage the transition. What I learned most, was that companies are constantly evolving, and that versatility and an open mind go along way when it happens.

Soliciting Feedback

Feedback, or my lack of soliciting feedback was definitely my Achilles heel during this internship. Throughout my time in HR technology, a lot of time was “wasted” seeking perfection instead of asking for completeness. Going the extra mile and over delivering is usually a good thing. But the lesson learned is too not get too carried away from the objective and ask your manager if you are veering off course. This lesson was learned after delivering a tool on my final day and having it crash the next. The tool was eventually stripped down into it’s core functionality and re-implemented. But the mishap of stripping the tool as well as the extra time spent attempting to build out functionality could have been avoided earlier on. In the future, and in my current role, I am a lot more proactive about sitting down with managers and getting direct feedback on my work and areas of improvement.

Documentation, Documentation, Documentation

One strength that I discovered throughout my time in HR Technology was the ability to document my work consistently and from day one. Documentation allowed me to pick up where I left off on a lot of assignments, manage projects more efficiently, and also allowed an easy transition of projects to other staff (if necessary). Some of the best documentation tools I implemented since day one were: change logs, work breakdown structures, and instruction manuals with an appendix of further resources. Of the three aforementioned tools, change logs became the most critical for me. In most of my projects, I was making constant changes and might have had been working on several components, i.e. videos within a module, simultaneously. Understanding what changes I made, what changes needed to be made, saved me from a lot of headaches. Here is a link to one example of a change log that you can view/donwload Manager Video Courses – Changelog.

Lincoln Financial Advisers