Meet Your New Team

A new job can be a great opportunity for growth, better pay, and a happier work environment, but it can also be a risk.  You want to know who you’ll be working with and what the day-to-day work will actually be like.  Wouldn’t it be nice if you could actually talk to the team you’d work with and ask them all the questions you have? Now you can – in a way.  We sat down with Eric Stump, our traffic team leader and the supervisor for this open position. We also invited the rest of the team: Jacob Long, Brittany Bolmer, and Zach Yiengst, and we asked them the typical questions our applicants want to know when considering a job offer at HRG.  Here’s what they had to say about daily duties, Eric’s management style, collaboration across the team, opportunities for growth, the types of projects you’ll do, benefits, and more.

We’ll start with you, Eric. Tell me a little about the person you’re looking for to fill this position.

We want someone to have a PE license and at least five years of experience. Ten years of experience would be preferable.

We want somebody that’s capable of either leading the design effort or someone who’s comfortable with project and client management.  We have a need for both right now. So, a person interested in leading the design effort would be checking studies, reports, and plans. And a person that’s interested in the project management side would be going to meetings, presenting material, taking feedback, and working with clients to solve problems.

If you’re a technical person who wants to focus on performing the work, checking the work, and sealing the plans, this could be the place for you.  And if you’re somebody that’s interested in leading the project, coordinating, and making sure the work’s getting done to the client’s expectations, this could be the place for you, too.  We’re offering both career paths.

How do you think you guys work as a team?  What’s the atmosphere like in your group?

Generally, laid back. We cooperate well towards deadlines. Everybody’s pulling in the same direction.

We communicate well and schedule that amongst the group. “If we have this done by a certain date then I can check it that afternoon. And then the next morning we can get back on the next step.” So on, and so forth.

Things pop up and things change and we’re all flexible. We’re generally laid back with how things are getting done.

We work well together. I’m actually Zach’s mentor, and Zach is Brittany’s mentor. And so there’s a lot of mentoring going on because there’s a lot of variety in what we do. There’s a lot of learning that needs to happen, so, as we each pick up new skills, we share them with the team.

How does that mentoring work? Is that a formal thing where you guys get together on a regular basis or is it just more “I know if I have a question I can ask this person”?

If there’s a question, someone just asks.  We either set up an informal Zoom meeting, or we’ll chat back and forth if it’s a small question.

It’s a little more formal in the beginning when you first start, but you can ask anybody anything anytime, and everyone’s really willing to help out.

In addition to the mentoring, how would you say HRG supports your career growth?

HRG has lots of training opportunities. In-house, we have a recurring Brunch-n-Learn that we do once a month from a corporate level. The topics are wide-ranging, not just traffic engineering, so you can learn about all aspects of the business.

Within the transportation department, we have another 45-minute session once a month. We’ll take a topic within the transportation field and just delve into that a little bit more.

We send our team to a lot of external training, too. PennDOT’s got a multitude of training sessions. We just sent Jacob to a three-day training on roundabouts this week. We’ve also sent people to drainage design courses, Synchro analysis, and so on.

I can’t remember a time that I or my supervisor declined a request for training. HRG wants you to learn and develop your skills, and they build time into your utilization rate for training.

The company has never really said no to any kind of training. If either Zach, Brittany, or I find something that we want to get trained on – like traffic signals – and there’s a program that PennDOT’s offering, I am certain the company will say sure.

I feel like I learned a lot more in two years at HRG than I did in four years of schooling. As Jacob said,  they’re always willing to support any training you can find. I’ve yet to see them say no to it.

Do you guys feel like you have an opportunity to contribute? That people in all the groups and all levels of the organization really consider your ideas? Do you feel like this is an environment that’s open to that?

I have never had a problem sharing my opinions or ideas on a project with the project managers at HRG.

In the traffic group, we have the unique opportunity to be working with a lot of other groups on their projects. We work directly with project managers because we’re doing a little piece of their project, and they’re always open to hearing what you have to say about the project and our piece of it.

The managers are pretty young. They’re around our age honestly.  When I’ve worked with more senior engineers at other firms, it seemed more intimidating to ask questions.  I’ve never gotten that pressure working at HRG. They’re all down-to-earth people.

Yeah. Even when we’ve worked with more senior members on the executive board, they were very approachable, very easy to talk to. They listen to your ideas and your analysis.  Communication is very open here, and it’s a nice environment to work in.

I think the group as a whole is open-minded. We’re always looking for new ways or different ways to do things. We have a few staff members that have developed spreadsheets or different tools that helped us do things a little bit more efficiently than we’ve done before. If there are procedures that we have that don’t make sense for one reason or maybe they’re a little bit outdated, we’re open to new ideas.

So, as a manager, what do you do, Eric, to make sure that nobody on your team is overloaded, that everybody can manage their stress levels, and nobody’s spread too thin?

I meet one-on-one with each of my team members at least once a week. It’s generally a 20-minute or half-hour meeting. We just run down the list of what they’re working on, and I ask them if they have any concerns with workload or deadlines, if they’re going to need help, etc.

Then, every two weeks, the entire team gets together as a group, and we plan out our workload for the next 2-3 weeks: Where are we? What are we planning to work on? Does anybody have too many deadlines to make commitments? Do we need to move things around? Do we need to ask for help from our Pittsburgh office or the Highway Department?” We make sure we’re balancing out.

Any job can be stressful.  There are deadlines, but I was actually talking to Zach about this earlier in the week.  We’ve been really busy with a particular project, and I asked him, “Since you’ve been working at HRG, how much overtime have you been authorized for?” And he said, “This is the first time that I’ve had to work overtime on a project.”  It’s a unique aspect at HRG: I don’t feel like I’m pressured to work 60 hours a week. That’s not something I had at other companies, you know?

Yeah, this past weekend and the weekend before was the first time in two years that I’ve had to work overtime to get a project in on deadline. I’ve been here two years, and I’ve only had to work overtime two weekends? Those are very, very good numbers for me. Obviously, we do have deadlines that we have to meet, but I’ve never had to go that far above and beyond to make sure we meet them because we’re an efficient team, everyone works well together, and, if we need to get something out by the end of the week, we all work together to make sure it gets out.

Eric, you brought up something important a few minutes ago: the fact that we’re operating virtually right now. Do you have any thoughts on how you’re going to integrate someone into the team when they’re coming on board and they’re not going to be able to work in person with the other members of the team?

We actually hired Brittany last summer.  She had a few years of experience in structural engineering, but she was new to traffic.  So she was coming on board in a remote environment without knowing anyone at HRG and without a great deal of experience with the type of work we do.  We worked hard to get her acclimated: I met with her over Zoom every morning for the first few weeks. After that, we met about twice a week, and recently we dialed it back to just once a week.  We also assigned her a mentor that she could go to with questions at any time. Whether she wanted to understand HRG processes or needed help with a technical issue, she always had someone she could go to.

I think that worked very well. It’s actually surprising how much your personality can show and how much you can get to know somebody through a virtual environment.

HRG has been really good about making sure that the whole team interacts with each other, and there are a lot of opportunities to get together outside of work and kind of get to know each other on a more personal level so you’re more comfortable reaching out to people. Every day I meet new people and I’m more comfortable. It’s just a little slower process probably because of being online right now.

What’s your management style, Eric?  How can the person who takes this job expect to interact with you as their supervisor?

I don’t micromanage people. Everybody has a different work style, so whatever works for them to get the job done is fine. Some people just go about problem-solving a little bit differently. As long as the end result is done well and checked, it doesn’t matter how you get there.

Tell me about the type of projects that your group does and what the benefits are? What’s rewarding about the type of work you do in the traffic group at HRG?

A lot of the work we do is for municipalities, and they’re mostly local municipalities near where I live.  Everywhere I go as I’m driving around town, I see work that we’ve done or an intersection we improved. It’s nice to work on projects where I’m familiar with the area, and I know how people use those roads.  A lot of our projects are right here in our backyard. It’s fun to see it go through construction and then see the benefits of our work as I drive on it in my daily life.  I’m not working on some highway on the other side of the state that I might only drive on once a year.  I’m working on roads my family uses. It’s rewarding to drive through here and see how much better it operates.

This is true even on the land development side.  When a new residential neighborhood or a new retail development is built, it’s neat to know I had a part in that and now it serves hundreds of people a day.

I was gonna say the same thing. I do work on larger land development projects here and there for developers, but I think the work I like the most is probably all the work we do for all the local municipalities, going to downtown Hershey and seeing all the signals and stuff. Knowing that I worked on all those plans. I think that’s probably the most rewarding part.

When I’m driving around with my wife, I’m always like “Oh I worked on that project” or “I was out in the field when that signal was being activated” or  “I was part of the design of that intersection.” She doesn’t always want to hear about it, but I love sharing the work that we do.

I really like the size of the projects and, like you said, the fact that a lot of them are located in the communities that we all live in. On a day-to-day basis, we’re driving past project sites that we’re working on. You can see how it’s going to affect everyone in the future.

I like the variety, too. I work on a lot of different types of projects: traffic study reviews, traffic signals, transportation impact studies, and highway occupancy permits.  I also support other groups: the highway group, the land development group, and even the civil group with reviews.

It keeps the days interesting. There’s always something new going on, and, with such a large variety, I’m not doing the same thing every day. I’m able to learn new things because the tasks are so varied.

What would you say are the best parts of working at HRG?

I like the team that we work with. I like that management is very approachable. Each and every one of them is somebody I trust. If I had a concern or something I thought we should be doing differently … they have an open door. They listen to all voices, and I have every confidence that my ideas will be considered. They may not always be implemented, but management will consider it and tell me why or why not.

In addition to that, the ESOP culture is very nice. The fact that everybody’s working on the same page, trying to get to the same end result. It’s not like one department’s trying to scoop all the work up for themselves or anything like that. … We’re helping each other, trying to manage different deadlines and schedules and workloads, understanding if things need to shift. We’re all working in the same direction and towards the same end goal.

One more question for you: If you were looking for a job yourself, and you were looking down through opportunities that are out there, what would you be looking for? And how does HRG deliver on that?

If I were looking for a job, I would want to go somewhere with a team that can back me up so that I’m not the only person trying to do it all.  It’s good to have reinforcement and team members you can trust.  And we definitely have that here at HRG. I know I can rely on my team when workloads get heavy.

Flexibility is important to me, too, and HRG really delivers on that.

It’s springtime now. If there’s a nice day outside and I don’t have meetings or deadlines, I can take an afternoon off and go golfing and make up some time another day. I don’t have to take paid time off as long as I can make up those hours sometime this week.  That flexibility is nice, and it comes in handy as a dad. Sometimes we have other commitments throughout the day or in the evenings. I’m always able to work around those and be there for my family without feeling like I’ve sacrificed my work.

I like the flexibility, too. I mean, if I have a doctor’s appointment or something like that, it’s always been okay.  They say, “Sure, go ahead; just work around it.”

I’ve never been told that I have to work a set schedule. As long as my work gets done, that’s it, that’s the important thing. And that flexibility has allowed me to retain a lot of my paid time off. If I take Monday off for a long weekend, I can make up that time during the week and save my days off for a different time period. I know that a lot of companies don’t allow that kind of flexibility in their time. As a matter of fact, you can even donate your time off to someone if you want to, which I’ve never heard of at any other company I worked at.  There’s a lot of benefits at HRG that I did not experience at any other company.  I think it’s nice they have an ESOP, and they still contribute to your 401K. There are definitely benefits to working at an employee-owned company, for sure.

Things that are really important for me in a job search are the manager and the team you’re working with. This team works very well together, and we have a great manager who is looking out for our interests and professional growth. I think that makes a big difference.

Are you looking for a place where you can work on projects that make a real impact in the local community? A low-stress environment where everyone shares the workload and people at all levels of the organization listen to your ideas? Are you seeking flexibility to balance your professional aspirations with your personal passions and obligations? Are you looking to grow your expertise and work for a company with real opportunities for advancement?