The Power of Professional Relationship Building
Introduce yourself and tell us your University of Hawai’i experience?
Hi, I’m Jarenn and I graduated from Shidler with a Bachelors of Business Administration focusing in Human Resources in Spring of 2013. I am currently a Senior Program Manager at the Nordstrom Company supporting our operations team.
How did you get to your role at Nordstrom?
I got to Nordstrom during COVID actually, I was reached out via LinkedIn for a remote opportunity as an HR business partner. I had been an HR business partner throughout my career, but this was supporting a digital styling group and retail was a new industry for me. I also really align with Nordstrom's values, so this was really exciting and I was happy to move over.
What do you enjoy most about working at Nordstrom?
What I like about working at Nordstrom is their values are very people and service oriented. It’s also really exciting to learn more about the retail industry. I also support operations and supply chain and that’s such an important part of a lot of businesses so that’s been really exciting for me to be a part of.
What I enjoy about human resources is that I get to learn a lot of information at a very high level across the company, so that I can use that information and resources to create a better employee experience.
What was the best thing you did as a Student in Shidler College of Business?
Some of the experiences I had at Shidler really have impacted my career today. I think the #1 was relationship building, which was a really important part of my social life but also my academic life. I was really involved in different business clubs too. At work and throughout my career, I’ve continued to build and maintain a lot of connections which have helped me move on to new places. It was actually a connection through a business club that actually got me my first internship at Boeing Company which led me to Disney and later Nordstrom. So, if it weren’t for that first connection at Shidler I don’t know that I would have been here today.
What’s something you learned at Shidler that still helps you today?
The biggest lesson that I learned in school that helps me today is that we can learn things by the book, but things can be interpreted or leveraged in different ways in reality. You could memorize things as rules and policies by the book, but when you apply them in life or in a project, it may be very different. That has helped me as an employee, human resources professional, and program and project manager.
How could students make the most of their UH experience?
I think students should get involved as much as possible. Whether that’s through a business club or just making friends through a school project that you have, building those relationships are important. Also, learning how to work with others, collaborate, and influence without authority are really good skills you need to apply to the workplace in the future.