Not learning at my internship, should I quit?

Can you not go to someone and tell them you are here to help. They can put aside work that you can do for them and in the morning you will get started on it and complete it. That you are also here to learn. If you are just sitting around I’d personally leave. I know that it will look good on your resume but really just sitting there is not helpful to you or anyone else.

It’s a small business who only 3 people working in the building. All others work from home. But the only reason she even comes to the office is because of me.

I kind of learn as things come such as if someone filed for unemployment I will look at the paperwork and try to fill it out, have her review, and I’ll file it. But like I said i have been sitting here for two hours doing nothing.

I just really wanted to work in hr..it seems like the universe is against me and I’m not meant to be in the field ://

@chelle21689 I doubt the universe is against you rather this woman is busy. Can you contact your friend and let him know of your predicament. Perhaps there is another office that could use you?

It’s only been three weeks.

I understand that it’s frustrating, but as you’ve already said, you need the spot on your resume, and you need the business contacts. Play the long game, stick it out, and in the meanwhile, bring a few study materials for the slow periods.

I’d hang tight, @chelle21689. Your experiences here, even the bad ones, will prepare you very well for a career in HR. Perhaps you can find areas that might be improved—make sure that your wit and worth are evident even when you’re just sitting there.

The world is not against you, and you have so much to learn from this experience, even if it’s not evident right now.

Have they gotten a new HR coordinator or have they left you in charge of HR? It would seem you come out ahead either way. You either have someone new to train you or else they have shown that they trust you enough to handle things on your own, If it really seems that there is nothing for you to do, ask if they think your services will be needed.

Maybe ask her if you can observe instead of assist as part of the learning process. Make notes so you can ask questions when she is not so busy.

Spend that time productively by looking at web sites that treat various HR-related and business-related topics. Educate yourself on topics such as these (and remember to get more than one view of them):

best practices for small businesses
employees’ rights
management issues
legality and confidentiality
record-keeping
insurance

That’s just for starters. Someone who works in HR could undoubtedly suggest more.

Look up any topic that arises in the course of your work and find out more about it.

Follow leads.

Take notes: make yourself a Word file of brief summaries, links, and your comments. (You know you can paste clickable links into a Word document, right?) This could become a valuable reference for you over time. I do research this way, creating a clickable index by topic to help me find things.

Also educate yourself about the business itself, whatever it is. Whatever it is, there’s something to know about it. Your learning time won’t be wasted. Nothing you learn is ever really wasted.

@LostInParadise they did his job go up but they taken down. I think if they brought someone on they would have to kinda train them anyways so I think I’m sort of assisting that role. I guess I’ll stick it out… lol

I would stay for the simple reason that you haven’t had any luck with no experience on your resume. My experiences with trying to get into anything where’s there’s going to be a fair amount of applications is that if you have no experience more often than not you are tossed in the bin. Having a foot in the door changes everything even if you feel you don’t bring much more to the table than you did before. I have been pretty jaded by my terrible year of unemployment 2 years ago though.