Article archive / October 1, 2012
Originally published: . Volume 4, No. 2. Source pages: 9.
Claire Taylor, a fourth year student in the Industrial-Organizational Doctoral program at LSU Baton Rouge, recently received a year-long internship with Merck & Co., Inc., an international pharmaceutical company based in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey.
In June, Claire Taylor was hired as an intern for Merck & Co., Inc., the company behind such drugs as Clarinex and Fosamax, and also consumer products like the Dr. Scholl’s line and Coppertone products. Working with a 5-member team comprised of IO psychologists and HR professionals, Claire’s job involves performing 360˚ evaluations for internal clients, or revamping existing 360˚ processes.
“I am helping manage internal clients who come to us saying that they would like to administer 360˚ review processes to their group, in addition to revamping their 360˚,” Claire told the Times about her work. This type of review allows individuals to receive feedback from superiors, peers, subordinates, and sometimes also customers, giving it the name, 360˚.
In addition, Claire has been working to develop new professional competencies that can apply across different job titles and be integrated into selection and assessment procedures.
One of her favorite projects so far involved working with union members to establish new assessment processes in their organization. “The project involving the unions…was really eye-opening for me because I think we get trained, especially in academia on what the best practices are, but it doesn’t ever speak to all of those other contextual factors.”
When asked if she was enjoying her experience, Claire told the Times, “I am getting a great opportunity to learn about what it means to work in corporate America with the skill set I’ve developed over the past years. Getting an internship is a good idea for what we do if you want to go into practice because you get exposure to different things that academia just can’t afford you.”
She continued, “One of the things that has been really good about this position is that I haven’t had a lot of assessment and selection work … so I have helped with a few projects that have to do with suggesting appropriate tools for selection and assessment needs.”
When discussing the transition from academics to the corporate workforce, Claire commented, “Just seeing these assessments in practice have stuck out for me as being very different, the concerns we have in industry are very different from those we have in academia. And the types of questions we ask are very different … we have different sets of concerns and priorities, and different things drive your decisions,”
She continued, “I think we got really good classroom instruction from Russell [Matthews] and Tracey [Rizzuto]. They did a really good job of trying to prepare us, and I think between the two of them they had really different backgrounds as far as what their experiences were, so they both had different perspectives on what it means to be an IO psychologist.”
Claire will continue her internship with Merck through June, 2013. She is currently researching her dissertation where she is examining the concept of co-working and the impact it may have on people’s lives.
Claire Taylor (photo S. Lowery)
This article is part of a historical newspaper archive. Read the original issue for its original layout, photographs and graphics.