Paige Prather: Making an IMPACT

Indiana INTERNnet celebrated internship excellence on Feb. 4, 2015, at the 9^th Annual IMPACT Awards luncheon. Though the event is over and the winners have been announced, we are continuing to celebrate the nominees’ successes.

These are their stories.

Indiana INTERNnet: You were a long-time intern with Angie’s List and worked your way up to a full-time position. How did your internship help you get to this point?

Paige Prather: I started interning with Angie’s List the summer after my freshman year of college (May 2012). As an intern, one of the areas I assisted with frequently was Talent Acquisition. When I graduated in December 2014 from Marian University, there was an opening in the Talent Acquisition department. I still went through the process like an external candidate. My internship helped me to be offered a full-time role because of my depth of knowledge about the company, great working relationships with managers in other departments, and my need for very little training as I had worked closely with the Talent Acquisition team many times.

IIN: As an intern, you stepped into a situation with another department that wasn’t happy with HR’s performance and turned the relationship around. How did that experience help you grow professionally?

PP: I was sent to a sales recruiting meeting as the only HR representative tasked with leading the meeting of unhappy managers. I knew that the relationship needed mending and extra attention. At that time, I was the only one with the capacity to give that to them. In addition to gaining confidence in myself, this experience taught me how to work through a needs-analysis of determining where the situation was, where it needed to be, and how I could make that happen.

Paige Prather (second from right) with the team that competed for Angie’s List at the Corporate Challenge last fall.

IIN: You volunteered to step in for another team member while she was on a leave of absence. Can you tell me more about how that experience shaped you?

PP: The employee who was on leave is a Learning and Leadership Development Specialist. My primary responsibilities included running the orientation program for new hires, facilitating the internship program for that summer and coordinating our management training series.

All three of these responsibilities shaped me in different ways. When I ran orientation, we were in a major growth stage with around 80 – 90 new hires starting per class. I learned confidence as I conducted orientation in front of that many individuals and I learned the importance of always representing the brand that is your company. Running the internship program helped me to be a mentor to the interns and a coach to intern managers with questions.

IIN: What do you love about Human Resources?

PP: The thing that I love the most about HR is what we do for our employees and the organization. Employees cannot be successful in their roles without effective human resources. They need benefits to keep themselves and their family healthy, managers need coaching on employee relations to best manage their teams, and the organization needs top talent to continue to provide the best services to our members and service providers. HR was a career in which I could help others in my daily role and know that in doing so, I was also helping the whole organization.