Public Relations/Communications

Name Brian
Education B.S., University of Illinois, Urbana; M.A., University of North Dakota, Grand Forks
Department/Concise Job Description/Years Spent at State Farm Public Affairs Specialist, 5 years
Location Colorado
Career Path 2 years as an Auto claim representative, then to Public Affairs

I started off five years ago at State Farm as an Auto claims representative but am currently a Public Affairs specialist. Most of my days involve receiving communication pieces that need to be proofed and edited, the last stop in the publication process.  I also typically have a few in-progress items that I’m writing and doing follow-up research.  Our team handles the functionality of our zone’s home page as well, so that’s a big part of my day, making sure everything that is there is correct, concise, thorough, and easy to comprehend for our associates. My job is terrific, since I get the privilege to work with folks from all job classifications and locations across the Zones and meet new peopleevery day. The best ending to my day is when I get to take care of pressing communication for the following day and make sure those time-sensitive pieces get turned around and out to the intended audiences in the time they need.

One of the most interesting projects I have worked on here was Project E, an effort spearheaded by our Senior Vice President, Dave Gonzales, and Vice President Operations Ken Cook. It’s a unique opportunity to talk about employee attitudes and behaviors and the relationship to the success of State Farm.  I think it’s a rare and very inspiring idea…that our leadership cares enough for us to undertake such an effort around the question “What makes you look forward to coming to work every day?”  I don’t think it’s happening at many other places.  At each point in the initiative, I remembered thinking “This is really cool.”  Our employees certainly thought so too.

I love working for State Farm and would definitely recommend a future employee to take advantage of opportunities through building personal relationships. It’s amazing how receptive and excited our people are to help others.  Another thing I would say to a prospective employee is not to get too caught up with the idea that your job may not be exactly what you are trained for, or what you went to school for…I’m a good example of that.  I didn’t imagine I’d be using a graduate degree in English at State Farm, but I do.  There are aspects of all jobs at State Farm that will incorporate your talents.  I’m lucky in that mine is directly related to my background, but sometimes it’s up to us to make that connection with what we do every day.