Julie Dill

Her Work: HR Generalist

“Pretty much a couple times a week everyone tells me how inviting my office is.”

Julie Dill gives me an example of a conversation she has frequently. “You’re office is so warm.” “Oh is it too hot?” “No, I mean it’s just like inviting warm.” Julie Dill tells me “I don’t use the overhead lights.” “I like to keep it warm and soft lighting.” I ask Ms. Dill what kinds of things she does to create this warm inviting atmosphere and she replies “I’ve got the nice paper lamps, just kind of gives it a nice tone. I’ve got my mascot red fish over there.” She shows me her pet beta fish who sits in his bowl on top of a cabinet near the door. Ms. Dill is the only person out of all my interviews that has a pet in her office and I must say that it is somehow pleasing to see the little red fish in the glass bowl. Julie Dill says that “aesthetically I think it’s the lighting. I do keep it pretty warm temperature wise.” “In addition to that it’s just having that laid back attitude with that open door policy to let anyone know that they can walk in here and they don’t think it’s a stuffy HR office.” So part of the atmosphere she creates is due to her welcoming attitude.

I ask why Ms. Dill doesn’t use the overhead lights and she tells me they are “too bright. I don’t like it.” She says that having the overhead lights off and her lamp light in the room “it’s just more comfortable.”

When I ask Julie Dill if she likes her workspace she replies “I do. It’s comfortable. It’s nice that I have my own door that I can just shut whenever I want, as much privacy as I want. But yeah I think it’s comfortable.”

Ms. Dill works in a call center environment which has very high attrition. The company hires approximately 25-50 employees every other week so her work is divided equally between administrative processes and working with people. She tells me that employee relations issues is a large part of what she does.

I ask Ms. Dill to tell me about her workspace she tells me that she originally shared this office with another employee for the first two months of working here. Almost a year and a half later Ms. Dill is in the same office. Ms. Dill tells me about the social atmosphere here and says “the atmosphere here is very casual. We’ve got the atrium, pool tables, outside smoking area. The culture here is very laid back, stemmed from a techy crowd so the employee base is very- generally young, not professional. A lot of people come from jobs like fast food restaurants or doing customer service at subway. For a lot of them it’s like their first real job I’d say professionally.”

I ask Julie Dill to tell me how she feels working in her space here. She tells me she feels “fine. We deal with a lot of paperwork so at times it gets cluttered but I’m pretty organized and normally have piles of stuff going on. Due to our space limitations I keep acquiring more and more filing cabinets but it kind of just comes with the territory of just having so much paper.” She shows me the two huge filing cabinets which are purged every year. Her cabinets just include files for active employees and her coworker has more large filing cabinets for all inactive employees. I am surprised at their massiveness.

Speaking about Ms. Dill’s relationship with the community within the company she tells me how important it is to find a good team. She says that while at other places she may gain a different level of experience that she is happy to have found such a great team. “The fact that we all get along, and we all like to go out and hang out outside of work” she says “That’s a big thing for me.”

I ask Julie Dill how she got into HR and she tells me the story of how she fell into this field. She says “it worked out right.” “I wished I would’ve realized that’s what I wanted to do when I was younger and could’ve gotten more education in it when I was younger but I had no clue I just kind of fell into it.” She seems very happy and fulfilled working in HR and being able to work with people.

Putting her experience with her work into a few words Julie Dill says “exhausting. Trying- the employee relations issues.”She explains that there is some odd “drama” that can take place within employee relations issues. Ms. Dill tells me “I’m proud of the work that I do. I like it.” “It’s fun. It’s very entertaining. If I had one word it would be entertaining.”