Pamela de la Torre accepts her certificate from Dean Shapiro
Pamela de la Torre needed a new career and human resources (HR) seemed to be a good track to take. Working with the Department of Rehabilitation, she discovered SDSU’s HR Professional Certificate program and decided to enroll.
One unique program aspect, de la Torre says, “The classes are taught by working HR professionals. Courses taught by experts in the field provide me better real-world advice to find a job.”
Throughout the program, fellow classmates and instructors helped her along the way. “I was able to network in class. I made friends who were already working in the field and helped me with my job search,” de la Torre adds. She also enjoyed her capstone class, which put her knowledge into practice. “I was able to update job descriptions for a childcare center and create an electronics and social media policy for my job development company, Able-Disabled Advocates. The instructor also touched on topics from all seven previous classes to tie the HR Certificate program together.”
Today, de la Torre works as a temporary HR consultant at a manufacturing company in the Sorrento Valley area. “I was so lucky to get this job,” she exclaims. She finds everything that she learned from the HR program valuable because “it helps an organization hire, retain, and maintain a quality workforce, and it keeps its employees safe from workplace hazards. Through affordable benefits, payroll, and help with conflict management, an HR employee will help a company stay on course with its values and mission.”
She doesn’t plan to stop – de la Torre hopes one day to become an HR director. “I wanted a completely different future and a new job to go with it. I wanted all that was necessary to achieve that goal,” she adds.
She definitely is one step closer to reaching that goal.
