CentroNía further prides itself in providing professional development opportunities not just to its own staff but to those who seek to gain further professional experience by interning with CentroNía. This past summer, CentroNía hosted Reina, an intern for our Human Resources department. As an intern with CentroNía, she was able to gain experience that will help her further grow her career. Read about her time with CentroNía below!
Hello all,
I am Reina and this is my story as a CentroNía intern. To better share my experience working here I need to start from the beginning and that is when I applied to CentroNía. I applied because I believe in CentroNía’s mission of “Educating children and youth and strengthening families, in a bilingual, multicultural environment”. As an immigrant myself the mission resonated with me because CentroNía was created for those like me and my family in mind. After all the interviewing process I knew this would be a place in which I could learn but also support my community.
When I received the news that I was selected for the HR trainee role my heart was full of joy but I also felt intimidated by the challenge. So, for my first day of work I was filled with all these emotions and once it officially started I felt alleviated because of the environment. The people I met at orientation were the nicest and also the team I am working with have been very welcoming! Every day I got to learn more about the department and the organization as a whole. My time here brought me so many experiences and the work I am doing feels valuable and that actually helps others. My supervisors always make sure I continue to learn and provide me with opportunities to grow my career and build up my resume. CentroNía has given me the chance to come up with projects I am interested in working on and actually get to execute them.
One of my biggest projects for the summer was a cultural inclusivity survey. This initiative started based on my interest in the DEI field. The HR team supported my ideas and gave me the opportunity to work on it. They provided overall guidance while making sure I had all the creative freedom to conduct the survey. It was a very rewarding process and also full of lessons because I got to listen to the employees' opinions and it made me realize many blind spots I had when it came to diversity, equity and inclusion. Within the many tasks I worked on during the past year, a big one has been recruitment. After some time of supporting the recruitment process, it became like a cycle in which we are hiring candidates for positions. As part of the routine, I was interviewing candidates and one of them caught my attention. The applicant after the interview decided to send a thank you email that included their story and experiences. They shared how it has been their dream to enter the education field and all their efforts they have done so far. That made me go back to reality and notice how I am not just hiring candidates, they are real people with goals and aspirations that are seeking to find an opportunity. We worked together and found many qualities that were the perfect fit for the position, as they have all the motivation, interest and learning spirit.
As I continue to grow my career I am happy to continue working with CentroNía as an HR Associate part-time given CentroNía has been kind enough to provide a schedule for me that allows flexibility as I work on finishing my degree.
Thank you to Reina for sharing her summer experience with CentroNía!