Alabama Public Television presents in partnership with the State Personnel Department, Alabama Career Connection a unique look at jobs available in Alabama state government.

All coming up right now on Alabama Career Connection.

Hey, y'all.

It's Governor Kay Ivey.

Welcome to Alabama Career Connection.

This program shines a light on the many departments within our state government and the diverse careers available right here in Alabama.

Serving the people of our state is a rewarding experience, offering the chance to make a real difference in our communities.

Whether you're interested in education, public safety, health care, or technology, there's a place for you in state government.

So if you're looking for a career that makes an impact, I invite you join us in building a brand of future for a home in Alabama.

As I always say, let's get to work.

Hello, I'm Mark Fowler, Insurance Commissioner for the State of Alabama.

The Alabama Department of Insurance is the Chief Regulator of the Insurance Industry in Alabama.

We are also committed to helping the next generation of insurance professionals get their start.

That's why we started a summer internship program for college juniors and seniors.

We want to help students learn new skills, put their classroom curriculum into practice, and experience what it's like to work in insurance regulation for themselves.

We accept students from numerous educational majors, risk management insurance, finance, legal, marketing, and more.

It's been very successful.

We're very fortunate here in the state of Alabama to have universities here that have a risk management insurance program.

We're able to go to those universities and speak with the students.

They come in here for the summer.

They're here from June until July.

I manage the program, so we have different things for them to do.

Not only do they just learn about their area that they're working in, they also get exposed to a lot of different things in Montgomery.

We go visit with the governor, we take a tour of the capital, we visit Alabama Securities Commission.

This year, we're going to go to the Supreme Court, watch some oral arguments there, which is going to be incredible.

They've all really, really enjoyed the program.

We've been very fortunate to get some really good students here.

I can't say enough about how bright these students have been and how engaging they've been.

So I've really enjoyed that time getting to speak with the interns one-on-one and just watching them flourish through the program.

We had an individual from Troy University come in, and he acclimated himself very well with our division.

We got a chance to know him and build a rapport.

He demonstrated some ability where we thought we would give him an opportunity and to make an offer.

I attended a job fair.

Troy University offers job fairs every semester where they allow companies to come to the school and basically represent themselves and represent their future opportunities that they have for students.

The state of Alabama was there, and I chose to invest my time into the State of Alabama Department of Insurance.

Later on, they further contacted me and told me that I had got accepted into the interview process.

I did the interview and I ended up becoming an intern.

Two months after becoming an intern, I received the offer letter at my graduation from my boss, Ryan Donaldson.

I think if you are built with the right fiber, you believe in giving back.

And with that vantage point, you lift as you climb.

And I think as managers, we need to do that, and we should do that.

Once I met all these lovely people, I met a whole bunch of mentors, a whole bunch of people that were willing to guide me every step of the way.

I realized that this was the type of job that I was looking for.

If you're interested in interning with us, please reach out.

We'd love to talk to you.

If you're interested in finding out more about these jobs and many others, please scan the QR code on the screen or go to our website.

Every day I come in and I do county and state inventory of cigarette stamps and tobacco stamps.

And I also do property management for our entire division.

I'm the records retention officer for our entire division as well.

So I stay pretty busy, but it's good work and it's very rewarding.

working for the state as a whole, it's just been one of those things where I couldn't think of anything else, wouldn't want to be anywhere else.

This family is a family.

It's a second family.

You spend most of your time at work, so you have to be able to enjoy where you are.

I've been blessed to be able to be among an agency that is just a great place to be.

If you're looking for somewhere to grow and you're looking for somewhere to honestly just, where you want to increase your pay raise and you want to find a place that's fit for you I would say come to the collection services division most definitely.

So what I do every day is help taxpayers basically assist if they owe taxes or if they have any balances or any credits that they have on their account or how to file any taxes.

Basically just helping credit and debit accounts basically with a taxpayer.

I process individual tax credits for individual returns.

We also do tax incentives for corporate and any kind of income tax, tax incentives.

You would think that it's a hard, very daunting job, but there's so much training.

Everybody here will train you and teach you how to do your job and do it the best that they know how to do that you can do and they will take you to your full potential.

The job itself is extremely team oriented.

Whether it be with, you know, luncheons every now and then, or gatherings every few weeks, to build some camaraderie.

as I said before, and it's good for morale.

I like the team aspect.

We use that quite a bit.

a great benefit to be a part of the team Our agency is full of potential and full of promise for anyone that's looking to start a state career and have a long state career.

You get every weekend off.

Pay is great.

Office is very chill.

The environment is great.

It's great being a state employee.

You know, obviously the benefits and with, you know, retirement and all the perks that come with it besides just having a job.

And I enjoy working for the state of my lifelong resident.

So I'm very proud to work for the state.

I never miss a thing for my children.

I love my job.

I love the work environment.

Everyone here I've become such good friends with They're so welcoming.

They're so nice and I love my job.

I love what I do every day when I come to work and then I get to go home and be a part of my family.

We work with each other in the different sections, so everyoneknows everyone, and we are just one big family.

It's a very great career to have.

We have plenty of growth opportunities here, and are in this beautiful new building, and it's very convenient to be a thriving environment.

So, come on.

Our vocational rehabilitation program is our largest division of the department by far.

We serve thousands of individuals with disabilities each year.

The large portion of those are high school students grades 9 through 12.

This job has its rewards and the greatest reward is seeing people actually accomplish their goals.

Setting goals and accomplishing them and meeting milestones along the way.

The most beautiful thing is to have them come back to you years later and say, hey, you know where I'm at now, you know what I'm doing now?

And just to be really happy with what they've achieved.

It is very rewarding.

I love being able to help people and just waking up each day knowing that what we're doing is making a difference in their life and improving their quality of life.

I help all of the other secretaries and the counselors.

We help people with disabilities go to work, which varies from person to person.

Some people can roll straight into a job.

Others need college.

Some need a vocational evaluation to find out what they even can do.

We have some people who come in who may have started out as our administrative support assistants and they may have gone back to school and worked their way into other positions such as counseling positions and supervisor positions.

Some people may start out at one level and move around within the agency depending on what they're interested in.

An ideal person for me is someone who's a hard worker who has the passion for what they're doing.

It's a great place to work.

Very rewarding.

Great benefits, insurance, flexible schedule.

I have a young family, so that's really important to me.

Work's important, but also being able to have a good work-life balance.

It really is a family environment.

We refer to ourselves as the rehab family.

And I just love our coworkers.

We get to work as a team and collaborate together to come up with solutions for our consumers.

Being a state employee is a pleasure.

I couldn't ask for a better place to work.

Because it is a large program and we're serving so many people in so many different age groups, we need employees, particularly in our rehabilitation counseling ranks.

We staff over 150 counselors across the state and we need those individuals to manage those cases and help individuals go to work.

In our blind and deaf program, We need more sign language interpreters.

We need more vision rehabilitation teachers.

We need more orientation and mobility instructors.

One other area I'd love to highlight is our rehabilitation engineering and assistive technology program.

We need engineers to figure out how to accommodate people with disabilities and how to maybe even fabricate ideas that didn't exist before to serve.

They can serve not only in our vocational rehabilitation program, but our engineers serve all four of our major programs.

As far as my job, I am basically the chief accountant for the state.

All of the funds that come in and out of the state come through our office.

So our office is responsible for where different things, like if you go buy a car tag, where that money goes, we put that in the right account so that it can be dispersed correctly.

We have about 170 agencies that do business with us.

So they bring in all of their deposits come in through here.

All their payments go out through here.

But also we pay the state employees.

So we have about 33,000 state employees right now, and all the employees are paid out of our office.

I initially did not think about coming to work for the Department of Finance Comptroller's office.

I initially wanted to go into private, either private accounting or tax accounting.

At first I was really nervous about it because I did some research online and I was aware of some of the responsibilities and the importance of the comptroller's office had on the operations of other state agencies.

I feel like that was also the reason why it made me want to come here, because I wanted to be in a position that was important, that handle important duties.

People think of accounting, you know, you have your head down, just crunching numbers all day.

It's really not what we do, not what I do.

At least here.

If you are not sure about what you want to do in life, accountants will always have a job, right?

We'll always have a job in the accounting field in state.

There's struggle right now to hire people, so there's job opportunities.

Anyone interested to work for the finance department, I would encourage to reach out and definitely pursue that as an option.

It's a great place to work.

They offer career development.

I started, you know, at the bottom, you know, and over the years, I am now an accounting manager supervising for individuals.

They really help us grow in our careers.

They help you find every avenue you can so that when the promotion comes, you are ready and you are knowledgeable and able and you just keep on climbing the ladder.

If I knew of someone looking for a job, I would definitely tell them, look for the state, not just as an accountant.

So my entire family works for the state.

And they didn't start out there, you know, but they found as they watched different people, you know, watched what I got, how I have interacted in the state.

Sometimes people think, oh, I'm going to be enticed into this other area, that maybe the state is not for me.

But then once they get to looking into it, it looks more like, oh, you know, we have, they have holidays.

Have all the holidays.

Have a very generous leave policy.

We also have very good benefits.

You know, I could have retired nine years ago.

I'm still working today because I enjoy my job.

And I'm not the only one.

There's multiple down here that could have retired.

But we love our job.

We love coming to work.

We are a state agency.

We've been here for 40 years.

We were founded in 1984 by legislative act.

Our job is to compensate victims of violent crime any financial expenses associated with their victimization.

We compensate them and try to either pay for that or to reimburse them those funds.

That includes medical expenses.

If they're involved in assault, we pay for sexual forensic exams, we pay help us with funeral expenses, moving expenses if that person is in fear of where they live, we pay for lost wages if they're out of work because of their victimization, and then if it's perceived to be some lost wages for the future income, we look at that as well.

So we are, it's a phenomenal agency that I don't know of anywhere else in the state that we actually serve crime victims and help them try to become whole again after their traumatic experiences.

A lot of the victims will have medical bills, and they will be bombarded with calls from collectors about those bills.

And they've already been traumatized.

So a lot of times I'll get a call from someone and they'll be crying and saying, you know, why did this happen to me?

I didn't, you know, mean for this to happen.

And, you know, we try to explain to them that we know it wasn't your fault and we're sorry that you've been victimized, and we're just here to try to help as best we can.

We can't give them a whole lot, but we can help ease that burden some by taking some of those medical bills off of them and paying for some of them.

Yeah.

At 17, I have access to full health insurance at a very good price.

I have retirement that's already accruing and building.

It's a really good, really good opportunity in that regard.

In 10 years, assuming I'm still working here, I would like to be a specialist at the very least in 10 years.

This job for me is rewarding because we get to help families who are experiencing hardships from violent crimes.

Being a resident of Montgomery, Alabama, there's a lot of families that have come through this agency that I personally know, and I just appreciate the fact that they're the agency that exists that help families who struggle.

Working here is an excellent opportunity.

It's a good environment.

Obviously, we help a lot of people, and it's a really wonderful spot for me to be able to start off.

I've always been a fan of growing our own.

I like to hire them young and raise them up to learn about the job and have the experiences and to move them up.

We've had a lot of opportunities for advancement here within our organization.

When I see the potential and the ability to be able to promote someone, I take advantage of it because I think that's the best way that I can show my loyalty to my employees is giving them the opportunities to advance and do well.

The Alabama Securities Commission's mission is to oversee the securities industry in Alabama.

We are committed to protecting investors against investment fraud and ensuring integrity in Alabama's capital markets.

We work closely with the Alabama Legislature to pass laws to deter fraud, protect seniors, and also to help facilitate responsible capital formation, especially in the areas of small business development and promoting entrepreneurs.

There has been a strong emphasis on protecting older investors and enhancing laws to punish the criminals who seek out older victims.

Alabama is considered one of the leaders in protecting older investors.

The Alabama Securities Commission sets a high standard in the securities industry nationwide.

Our legal division has one of the highest prosecution rates in the country.

The Enforcement and Legal division often partner with other states and federal agencies to combat fraud nationwide and to develop uniform policies.

Our Licensing and Registration division ensures that financial professionals possess the education and background to work in the industry and that they are complying with the Alabama Securities Act.

Our Education and Public Affairs division travels across the state providing investor education and fraud prevention seminars for investors young and old.

The investing landscape is changing rapidly and so are we.

We commonly investigate multistate crimes.

So typically I'll be in a Zoom meeting with probably 100 plus people all trying to collaborate to take down a major company that has defrauded victims all across the country.

I think that is probably one of the most unique things about working here at this job is having to collaborate with people that I've never met in person.

But we all have the same goal.

One of the things that I really look for when I was looking for a role is something to do that makes a difference.

That we can empower people and really impact change and just it's immeasurable how much people are able to learn something from our presentations.

Anytime we get to hear that somebody learned about the red flags and they were able to protect themselves or they didn't get scammed because they heard something from our presentations.

You just can't measure that value.

You have to have a four-year degree to work here.

I would advise getting a college degree in some type of financial background such as economics, finance or accounting, because a lot of what we do involves that and that would make your on-boarding process when you first start here much easier to learn the terminology.

ASC is leading the charge in fostering financial innovation while protecting the investors of Alabama.

Every day is different and we have an opportunity to positively impact the investing landscape for Alabama investors.

What we do today will influence future generations and how they plan their financial future.

I am proud to lead this team of professionals and I hope you'll consider joining the Alabama Securities Commission.

So at EMA, I'm over the planning section, which involves natural hazards, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes.

Then I'm over plans as well.

Emergency operations plans, COOP plans, which is continuity of operations plans.

So if it has the word planning in it, I do it.

The one major thing that kind of really got me thinking was Hurricane Helene.

When we were in Montgomery at the National Guard, and we were.

We were there all day, we were going to go all night.

So some employ, you know, some staff members did go all night.

And what we saw and how you interpret the information and then send it out to the public, it was, it was something to see.

And it makes you feel good.

Even though it's disasters, I feel like I'm helping and doing a positive thing.

And I think that's our goal is just to help and try to do the right thing.

And we're pretty good at it so far.

I feel like it runs very well.

I like it because they don't treat you just like an accountant.

Because at most agencies you don't get to go places and you don't get to experience things.

But with Alabama EMA, you get to go places, you get to experience things, you get to go to conferences, and you're not just stuck in your cubicle counting numbers all day and you help the state.

I mean, the most rewarding times is during the Selma tornadoes that happened last year.

You know, that area doesn't have a whole lot of resources, but we made sure that they had what they needed, you know, with the recovery and everything.

They're still trying to recover, but, you know, we're still there with them.

We'll be there until the end.

And Hurricane Sally.

Hurricane Sally was in 2020, which everybody knows that 2020 was a very trying year because we also had Covid.

You know, we had to get FEMA in, but we worked jointly to make sure that those citizens down there, especially, you know, in Baldwin and Mobile county, those guys definitely get, you know, their fair share of hurricanes down there.

So resources could be possibly limited.

But we made sure, you know, through the recovery that we were there for them.

It's a very good work environment to work in.

And that was.

That's something I've seen just in my two months that has really made me realize I want to keep working there.

I'm in for the long haul.

This is a great agency that I've learned because I've been to a couple of different agencies, but this agency is really good because we're like a family in my accounting department.

We really are a team and teamwork makes the dream work.

I've always wanted to go into management and I have been afforded the opportunity with my supervisor currently.

So I would like to continue on with the growth.

I've had growth here at EMA and just would like to continue to grow.

If you are a people person and you like to help people and want to help the community or the state, you need to apply.

The main thing I want to say is to thank everyone for their interest and possibly working at the ABC Board.

The ABC Board does some various things.

In particular, we do business regulations, so we protect the public.

We monitor labels of products coming in.

We also try to make sure that responsible adults have an enjoyable experience in a responsible way.

We do provide funding for various state, city, and county agencies.

Last year, we provided over $350 million of funding to the General Fund, the Education Trust Fund, various cities and counties, as well as Department of Mental Health and Human Resources.

I began my journey here seven years ago.

I started as an entry-level warehouse worker.

Four years later, I became warehouse operations director.

So they give you a testimony of how growth and prosperity you can receive here.

I'm really trying to move as far as I can to pretty much move the ABC Board into the future.

We have artificial intelligence now.

We have a new warehouse that we're about to build.

So it's going to give a lot of people an opportunity to be successful.

Oh yeah, there's positions all over Alabama.

And I started off as a sales associated and I floated for a year and I say floating is a really good thing to do.

If you like being in multiple places and seeing a lot of things, I love floating.

It depends on how your family operates and what works better for you and your family.

Oh, yes, sir, yes, sir.

With the ABC Board, we have over 100 stores.

So you're not just tied down to your local county.

If you want to move to the beach, be down by Mobile or up in Birmingham or wherever, you're free to move.

I started off as an operational tech.

I started here in December, and I have already got promoted within six months, seven months of being here.

I just look forward to see exactly where my career goes within IT.

It's an agency that makes people happy by providing good products.

It also protects people, and it provides funding for people.

We're one of the agencies that the state does not provide any funding to.

We provide our funding through our operations.

It's a good place to work as an agency of the state because we have state benefits, we have retirement, we have health insurance, we have generous leave policies, the number of vacation days you get.

It is a good place for a family to work because we have a very family-friendly place.

And in fact, I retired or was about to retire from the state, and I decided to come to the ABC Board because of the atmosphere at the ABC Board, the people here at the ABC Board, and some of what we do.

So it's the only agency in the state that I stayed out of retirement for.

I encourage anybody, if you want to work in a fast-paced environment, being innovative, come build your future with the Alabama Beverage Control Board.

Join us for Alabama Career Connection, an in-depth look at career opportunities available in Alabama state government.

Alabama Career Connection, Sundays at 1pm on Alabama Public Television.