Both the job responsibilities and work environment have been a little different for Jamaal Stephenson in his first year as college scouting director for the Vikings.

Instead of traveling up and down the East Coast, he spent most of the fall flying all over the country. He runs the team's pre-draft meetings now, keeping order as his scouts make passionate pleas for their favorite prospects. And after focusing on college kids for more than a decade, he has his hands in the pro personnel side, too.

The biggest change, though, might be that Stephenson now has to share his film room with a sometimes-finicky office mate who is prone to occasional outbursts.

That would be his 5-month-old son, Julian, whose nursery in his Rockville, Md., home base is the same space Stephenson uses to watch tape of college prospects.

It's safe to say that not too many NFL college scouting directors have been changing diapers one minute then breaking down tape of blue-chip players such as Alabama wide receiver Amari Cooper and Michigan State cornerback Trae Waynes the next.

"You've got to wear multiple hats," Stephenson said this week with a hearty laugh.

Ask General Manager Rick Spielman, though, and he will tell you that even with Stephenson's third baby on board, the transition from Scott Studwell to Stephenson has been as smooth as he expected when he promoted Stephenson last May with Studwell looking to scale down his responsibilities and focus more on his family.

That is partly because Studwell still has a role in the scouting process for the Vikings. It's also because Spielman wasn't looking for a shake-up with Stephenson.

"Yeah, I'm not going to change," Spielman said. "We have systems in place. Jamaal has been here the entire time I've been here [since 2006]. He understands the process and he understands the format we go through and the system that we use. He stepped right in and did an incredible job for his first time running draft meetings."

Stephenson, a Brown graduate, joined the Vikings as an East Coast area scout in 2002 and worked his way up to his current position. His fingerprints are all over the team's roster. Take the 2014 draft class for example. He personally checked out picks from first-round quarterback Teddy Bridgewater to seventh-round cornerback Jabari Price.

In his new role, Stephenson has increased administrative duties, starting with deciding how to divvy up his five area and three regional scouts to different schools to ensure that every draft-worthy prospect shows up on the team's radar.

After the NCAA season, Stephenson led the efforts to organize all the information Vikings scouts had gathered so Spielman and coach Mike Zimmer could quickly be familiarized with this draft class before February's scouting combine.

In recent pre-draft meetings, when their draft board was finalized for this weekend, Stephenson — whom Spielman described as a "deep thinker" with a "very smooth, calm, even-keeled demeanor" — made sure they were peaceful and productive.

"When I promoted Jamaal, I knew his style, his personality and the way he handles things was going to be a benefit to us," Spielman said. "He started to get his feet wet and feel more and more comfortable, because that's a tough transition for people."

Stephenson, a scout at heart, is happy he still gets to hit the road in search of prospects. But instead of checking out prospects a couple of times in person like he did before, he usually only gets one visit per school.

"I still spend a lot of time in hotel rooms and rental cars and airplanes," he said.

He spends a lot of time on his laptop in Julian's nursery, too. And as much as he credits Spielman and Studwell for a smooth first year in his new gig, he praises his wife, Emily, too.

"I told my wife that I'll take days and she can take nights," Stephenson said. "It's difficult, having a 5-month-old. But I have a lot of support. … It's not easy, but it works."