Cover Letter For A Job Application For Oregon Eligibility Partnership

Dear Jillian,

I am both humbled and excited to be applying for the Oregon Eligibility Partnership (OEP) Manager with the Oregon Department of Human Services (ODHS). I have spent my entire public service career in various roles within ODHS – nearly 20 years - and am inspired at the idea of serving Oregonians in both a new position and program area. My passion for serving the public, experience in building and leading teams to deliver the highest quality services, and a personal commitment to accountability and integrity are the foundational basics that I will bring to your team.

My professional strengths and experience make me an ideal candidate for this position – I currently serve as the ODHS Assistant Human Resources Manager overseeing

The last 3 years plus in this role has given me the time to further refine my leadership style – I have embraced the opportunity to build a team within the HR structure – hiring 5 new employees to the Human Resources Business Partner role. I have enjoyed the interactive process of developing each of their unique skills, abilities, and perspectives in HR, and fostering an atmosphere of servant leadership with a “see-one, do-one” philosophy. Each HR case is unique to the person involved, so there is no one size all fits approach to the best resolution. I’ve partnered with each of my team members in the early stages of their role to have them observe and discuss HR incidents that I take lead on – encouraging them to ask questions, praising their intuition, and involving them in the decision-making process. This reinforces their natural abilities while allowing them to ask questions when they’re unsure and developing their experience in researching Collective Bargaining Agreements, Rules and Statutes, program policies and guidelines, and prior case law. As they observe, I assign them similar cases that they have ownership of, so they begin to develop their

Serving in this role has been one of the highlights of my career – the experiences I’ve gained during this time, and addressing inequities, challenges, and roadblocks when it comes to service delivery – has given me a unique perspective and vision of how ODHS can best serve those who need us most. I trained and managed a staff of 7 who received over 300 customer requests each month to address issues ranging from denials for benefits, discrimination, customer service, eligibility rules, and accessibility. Addressing concerns directly from Oregonians helped in drafting proposals and recommendations on how to improve policies and procedures, availability of resources, and accountability and transparency in government. An example of this was my proposal that became a cross-functional project to create and implement a GAO database for issue intake, case management, distribution, and resolution. I worked with OIS to design and test the program, trained staff and management on how to use the system and documented a user guide for future staff. Having a centralized system not only streamlined our process, but allowed our program to retain and track information, identify trends and areas of opportunity with ODHS, and make data-informed decisions on how the agency can best serve others. This seemingly small act of innovation, to