Hello everyone, and happy 2020! I hope everyone has had an exciting start to the new year. As a Human Resources professional, I use my strengths of networking and organization to connect good people to exciting work opportunities. I was drawn to this field of business from a very young age, when I started helping my friends and peers prepare for job interviews, write resumes, and reach out to mentors. I think it is so important to develop professional skills and make career action plans early on, especially in our competitive and growing society today.
After working for a tech start up of 400 people and then a giant corporation of 247,000 people, in January 2020 I received the unique opportunity to join Facebook Chicago as a Candidate Channels Specialist on their HR & Recruiting team. Through this new role I got the chance to spend two weeks at Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California to attend new hire orientation and train for my role. It was an exciting trip filled with career growth, bonding with new co-workers, and getting some time to explore the city of San Francisco.
When I was first approached about interviewing for this job, I was apprehensive. After working for two well-known brands over the past few years, Yelp & PepsiCo, and completing several internships at tech start-ups, I was familiar with how corporate life differed between large and small companies. I wanted to make sure that whichever company I worked for next placed an emphasis on fostering workplace creativity and respect while valuing empathy and diversity in their recruiting process. I am happy to say that Facebook truly does take all of these items into consideration and their interview and on-boarding process made me feel valued and immediately accepted into their community.
My social impact initiative as Miss Mississippi Crown 2020 is “There She Leads: Empowering & Inspiring the Next Generation of Female Leaders”. I am spending my year advocating for equipping young girls with leadership and professional skills to help them succeed in their classrooms and future careers. That is why it was so important for me to choose a company that demonstrated how they uniquely support their female employees. Not only was I greeted with incredible women in leadership roles from the very beginning, but during orientation and training I was shown all the efforts the company makes to help young women grow in their careers at Facebook. From matching new employees with mentors to creating “tribes” for every employee to join based on their personal identities and beliefs, it was refreshing to see the support and acknowledgement for such an important issue to me.
A lot of opportunities in my life came to fruition at the same exact time a few weeks ago, so 2020 has already been a true test of time management, organization, and grit. It is during times like these that I am forever grateful for the support from both of local directors, Stacy and Nicole, my teen sister queens, Emma and Olivia, and the entire Mississippi Crown team for encouraging me during these overwhelming times. I am happy to be back at my tech company roots, helping talented individuals find their home at Facebook. Technology is rapidly changing our society and it is inspiring to have conversations with people who want to harness that power to make life better for others. From full-time work to grad school to creating partnerships for my social impact initiative, this month has been a wild ride already but I’m excited to see where the momentum takes us!
Your MMC 2020,
Isha Jog
