New Job, For Real This Time

Even though I titled my last blog post saying I'd include information about my new job, I got carried away with lawn stuff and forgot. So, here's the scoop on the new job.

I'm still working for the research company in Okemos and will be there until around June 17. It's a great place, truly. If they needed a full time HR person, I'd never leave. But they're small and don't need a full time person right now, so I kept looking even after I started there.

I had a phone interview and two in-person interviews at LCC in very quick succession. LCC has actually decided to take their HR department and start over again with almost all new employees. I think only one person is left from the previous HR. The others have all been there less than two months, and I'm the last person to join the team.

My new title is HR Consulting Manager. They've broken the college down into cohorts, and I will have about 1,000 people who will call upon me as their main HR representative. In addition, my boss and I are responsible for Organizational Development for the entire campus. That means we'll be doing a lot of training, employee/management development, and change management, something I've always loved to do. There are four main groups in HR, and each has a speciality. So, for example, another group is in charge of benefits, and yet another one is in charge of employee & labor relations. So, we will all overlap and interact a lot. I think it's going to be a great opportunity to join a brand new time like this. We can really build it from the ground up and hopefully grow it into a great HR department.

I'm starting at LCC on June 22. Between now and then, I have to become familiar with their labor agreements and policies so I have at least some working knowledge when I come on board. And, I still have a lot to do in Okemos as we finish up the special project I've been working on.

So, the next couple of weeks will be busy, but that's great. I'm so grateful that this is happening. The strange thing is that I started working in Okemos the week after my State of Michigan unemployment ran out. They told me they'd send me the information for me to apply for federal benefits, but, to this day, that hasn't happened. So, I'd have no money at all coming in. Everything happens the way it's supposed to and in the time it's supposed to, and God answered our prayers to give me such a great job with great benefits. We're blessed, that's for sure.