Spotlight felt simultaneously exhausted and totally energized, upon learning how much Jacqueline Benitez uses O*NET and how much she accomplishes in her life. Jacqueline uses the flexible tool in her work at Trustmark Insurance Companies in Lake Forest, IL, where she is a Compensation Analyst. But long before she arrived at Trustmark, Jacqueline was using O*NET to help college students, in her volunteer work with SHRP (Society of Human Resources Professionals) and DePaul University's ASK (Alumni Sharing Knowledge), she also used O*NET at her former employer.
"In Human Resources we have been compiling job descriptions from all areas of the company. Our firm is about 2,400 employees, with approximately 800 people in our Home Office. Job descriptions had not been centralized," Jacqueline told Spotlight. "Thus, they were not standardized, and in some cases they were not very well done or were so esoteric as to not be helpful when trying to benchmark the jobs to compensation survey jobs.'
"We don't beat people up for good job descriptions, demanding a specific deliverable within crushing timeframes," explained the upbeat Benitez. "As managers approach us to do a project for them, we ask them to create or update their job descriptions-to accomplish the requesting department's specific compensation project goal."
"We are consistently aligning the jobs within the organization," Jacqueline continues. "An example project-One of our managers was evaluating sales support positions within her area. I was able to assist her by providing descriptions of tasks associated with sales support activities. In O*NET, I found several occupations that would be useful in writing the job description, I generally share with the managers the extensive occupation information in O*NET. I encourage them to tweak the information that I send them from O*NET, taking out what is not accurate in their specific case, and incorporating what is ‘missing,' based on the needs of their specific areas. Then we are able to study salary surveys, benchmarking the manager's job titles to appropriate occupations across industries, and using common language, tasks, skills, etc., consistently.
"This type of project progresses very well," Jacqueline concludes. In some cases, we work with our Organizational Development Team who performs assessments of the requirements of the job. It is a relatively painless process to look at completed job descriptions and accompanying information available from O*NET Online, validated with my department's salary survey data-and to determine appropriate salary ranges for positions. Yes, we have to tweak a bit—both in articulating tasks and in grounding our salary ranges where we at Trustmark want them to be, within the macro workforce ranges. But we know where we want to be, percentile-wise, so that part is easy."
Jacqueline is on the Board of Chicago's SHRP chapter. For years she has worked through its College Relations Committee, establishing relationships with colleges and universities, conducting workshops for students, and guiding soon-to-be graduates through résume writing and interview dry runs. She uses O*NET liberally when helping students through those activities. In her work with DePaul University's ASK, she leans on O*NET while doing similar work. Jacqueline is quick to give kudos to several of these schools, citing them for caring for students and expending energy to be certain that students are prepared for professional life-especially Loyola University of Chicago, DePaul University, the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, and Robert Morris University.
As a youngster, Jacqueline dreamt of being a lawyer. But learning that lawyering required many more years of education and expense, she majored in Management, specializing in Human Resources. As her career progressed, she found herself concentrating increasingly on compensation challenges. Jacqueline enjoys her work. What Jacqueline sets out to achieve, she accomplishes-leveraging hard work, experience, know-how, and zest for the task.
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