One of the biggest impacts on my academic and professional goals was my internship at Tetra Pak in Singapore. I was given the opportunity to work during the Fall semester while living in a place I haven’t lived in before, without any friends so that I could gain professional experience. I was a Human Resources Learning and Development intern. My intentions were to go back to UC for the Fall semester but since I got this internship offer, I stayed in Singapore. I was glad I could do this internship as I was able to learn about the different working styles and how to work with different cultures and multiple countries. My supervisor taught me many things that I took away. One of the main things was to take initiative and to know all my facts. I also learned that HR was the field I wanted to go in. Until this semester I wasn’t sure what I wanted to study. I changed my majors a couple of times but gaining this experience helped me add a certificate in Organizational Leadership-Talent development. And I also tried to find on-campus jobs which were HR related. I had emailed multiple Recruiters of UC at UCs central HR department. I was then offered an on-campus HR co-op.

 

Once this HR co-op started, I was able to get hands-on experience on what I was studying in my intro to HR class. I learned about the Labor unions and the contracts at UC as I was given a project to match data. This had helped me become more detail-oriented. As much as I love HR as a whole, I didn’t want to learn about laws and labor unions, I learned that this department doesn’t suit me. I liked the Talent Acquisition department and hope to do more in this department in the future. I had such a great supervisor. She helped me a lot on how to go up the professional ladder too! I had many goals and plans set for this year as I am heading into senior year, but I didn’t know things could take such a turn due to COVID-19.  My current goals for this academic year are to do multiple courses that will help me improve my technical skills. I also plan on volunteering virtually or doing a remote project which will benefit people, and which will also help me gain some professional experience as well as academically. I hope to boost my networking skills. I hope to learn a programming language and to get more certifications in HR.