UAM Graduate Talks with CIS Members

Managing Editor

Photo by Linna Jones

Job Advice- Miranda Bunting, a 2008 UAM graduate, gives advice to CIS students about apply for a job and tells about her work with Medicaid and Electronic Data Systems.

   University of Arkansas-Monticello graduate Miranda Bunting came to speak with Chi Iota Sigma members about her work with Medicaid and what students can do to get a job Oct. 1.

   Bunting graduated in 1998 with a degree in Computer Information Systems. Bunting works as a Business Analyst for Electronic Data Systems, now HP Enterprise Systems.

   She said the state sets limits on how a group is covered for Medicaid, but her organization wants to tell customers the dollar amount they are covered for. In effect, she talks to a programmer, tells them what areas need to be changed and how it needs to be coded. The programmer codes the information and the business analyst goes over to make sure everything works right and people are being paid what they should. The government then signs off on it if they want it and designates when it goes into effect.

   Medicaid provides a Web site, which cover as a person if they use Medicaid. It covers the physicians and tells a person what our company should be doing. Yearly, they put out reports that show how many people in Arkansas have Medicaid, the percentage number or how much  money  the government is getting and how they are actually putting the money towards people.

  From the system engineer’s standpoint, they code everything and have the responsibility  of writing code for any program in that department. This includes legacy code for COLBOL, Csharp, C++ and any.net development used by HP Enterprise system.

   “Basically, if you are going into the programming field you sit and you fix stuff all day long,” Bunting said. “If they come up with a new program, you sit and you code it from scratch and you have to make sure it meets those specifications.”

   EDS is strictly moving to .net programs. Everything will be C++.net by next year.

   “So if they don’t teach it get a book start training yourself on it, everybody that I know in this industry is moving to web based products,” Bunting said. “They want everything on the web right down to our database. Our doctors can go in when we are working on something and they can see where we are at.”

   Programmers have the flexibility of working at home, flexible schedules, but an employee must put 8 hours. In the Systems Department, they try to keep the environment so an employee wants to come to work and does not hate their jobs.

   Bunting described how programmers work from home, and they can log onto a secure server to do their work. They must make sure no one knows their code or if it is found that someone logged in to look at their work using their code, they will be held accountable.

   Bunting takes information from clients, interprets it, gives it to a programmer and makes sure they know what to code and how code. Then, it comes back to her and she is responsible for it.

      EDS is a company, which started out doing Medicaid, but they also do other bids. They currently hold a bid for the British Military government section, they are the top Information Technology company in New Zealand and Argentina. They have plenty of options for employees to work in other countries.

   The opportunity for employees grew when HP bought EDS.

   “Now that HP has bought us that list has grown, literally on where you can and cannot go, what you can and cannot do, it is not just health care. You can work for HP to make computers, you can be in their help centers that ups in Conway and answer calls all day,” Bunting said. “You can work in the medical field, anything that HP already did plus Medicaid. So once you get in the door, they ask where do you want to go and where do you see yourself in five years.”

   HP offers great benefits and employees can receive discounts on cell phone plans and discounts at Walgreens to name a few.

    Bunting recommended while EDS is still under their name you can look up their address. Bunting recommended when looking for a job at EDS to be persistent and e-mail your resume everyday and if by mail, send it in every week.

   “If you really want that job, e-mail it or mail it everyday. The more persistent you are with this company the quicker you are going to get in,” She said.  “If you’re not really sure this is what you want to be, post it on Monster.com, they’ll come looking for you. That’s how they found me, I wasn’t looking for anything else, I didn’t know this company existed.”

   When Bunting went for an interview, she brought her senior project. She said they looked at it and she was hired based on documentation skills she learned in earlier classes. They look at applicant's code, how a applicant laid it out physically as far as what the screens looked like, how user friendly it was and how well the applicant documented everything. Everything a student did in that class they picked apart. When applicant answers the basic questions the right way, they’ll move on to stuff the applicant does not know. The more an applicant knows the better off they are.

   She also talked about different positions she worked in over the years including the call center. She is currently creating a training program. EDS usually hires within so they do not have training programs. She said a lot of information is thrown at someone so fast, they have to learn about a program quickly and understand how it works in about a day.

   She currently works with 13 team members including her boss and the SE team, which has 20 members. They also have positions open and need web developers badly.

    She described it as a high-risk job with integrated systems and how everything has a security level. In order to get into the building, a person needs to have an ID tag and they have to be an employee.

   When they decide to hire an employee, they run a federal background check, criminal background check and financial background check, they want to know everything about an employee they can. She describe how a drug test she took required cutting hair, they wanted to know what a person did in the last six months. A person has to have a thorough inspection  before they will even let them set foot inside their building.  A person cannot look at any information unless they are hired to work at the company and will get in trouble if they allow information to get out.  

     She described the environment lively, supportive, and parties every week for some reason or another.

   “It’s a very high risk job, there’s a lot of consequences that come with it, but its worth it,” she said. “It’s a very laid back environment, but when it comes to how you handle documentation they are strict. It’s a really good place to work, but you have to be very mindful of what you do with what you have.”

   Brian Hairston, chair of the Division of CIS, said he thought Bunting did and excellent job. She talked about how Medicaid claims are processed, other systems and how there are jobs there.

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