I work for an organization with a very positive mission: the needs of our patients come first. It is not the bottom line, it is not to improve a product or increase market share; it is truly for helping and serving people.

A typical day varies from a lot of meetings to no meetings, to lots of phone calls to not very many phone calls. It just depends on the needs of my managers. One constant each day is a steady flow of emails. Email is a well-used business tool in Human Resources. We use e-mail for requests for something, for asking questions about a policy, to read up on Mayo business, or to do research on laws that have changed, for example.

People are fascinating. Being in this role means dealing with people such as managers, employees, or people outside of Mayo. It is interesting to meet and work with different folks; you work through the problems and questions, keep in touch with the different issues, and then solve or answer these issues. This role requires skills to think critically and problem solve. You have to able to deal with ambiguity, meaning you may have one story from one person and the exact opposite from the other person, and you need to get to a point where all can be agreeable. You need to present yourself well and be able to talk to people in a level-headed manner; you can't have a short fuse. You may have someone yelling at you, you may have someone in your office crying, you may have a lot of different things going on at once and you need to think clearly and be level-headed during those moments. You are dealing with people constantly -- if you don't enjoy dealing with people, you don't want a position like this.

Human Resources professionals in smaller organizations have to do it all; they don't get a chance to specialize. Working at Mayo, you get to specialize and develop skills. You also have a lot more resources available to you like other HR staff who have various levels of experience, skills and abilities to help you solve issues.