KARLA PORTER

When you do what you love it’s not work and I’m very for­tu­nate to be in that position.

I’m Direc­tor of Work­force Devel­op­ment and Human Resources for a mid-size metro area Cham­ber of Busi­ness and Indus­try and eco­nomic devel­op­ment agency in Wilkes-Barre, PA. My 2010 goals are to cre­ate the best intern­ship pro­gram on earth for the 5 area col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties in my area of ser­vice, a Cham­ber affil­i­ated human cap­i­tal com­mit­tee to help incre­ment the num­ber of area employ­ers of choice and a Latino busi­ness coun­cil to fos­ter growth of this emerg­ing entre­pre­neur­ial sec­tor in the Wilkes-Barre area. I expect it to be a wild, really fun and chal­leng­ing year!

Prior to join­ing the Cham­ber, I worked as an Oper­a­tions Man­ager turned HR Gen­er­al­ist with the pri­mary account­abil­ity of super high vol­ume, full-cycle, 3rd party unas­sisted, cor­po­rate recruit­ing. I made the change out of frus­tra­tion at cur­rent recruit­ing prac­tices, low qual­ity can­di­dates pre­sented to me for inter­views and a desire to bring top qual­ity tal­ent into the orga­ni­za­tion. Tasked with reduc­ing cost per hire I turned to social media and reduced it by 40% in one year.

In my past, I have been a colum­nist for the Philadelphia-based Span­ish lan­guage pub­li­ca­tion El Espetac­u­lar, a pub­lic ser­vice offi­cer for WTGI-TV 61 Tele­mu­ndo affil­i­ate, and worked for over a decade in Mex­ico as a busi­ness owner and founder of the country’s first orga­ni­za­tion for ani­mal wel­fare to receive gov­ern­ment sup­port, the Humane Soci­ety of Cozumel Island. I also served as a con­sul­tant to the Cozumel Cham­ber of Busi­ness and Industry.

From time to time I have taken on adjunct fac­ulty posi­tions to instruct Span­ish lan­guage GED classes, Mar­ket­ing and Cus­tomer Ser­vice courses  and  Com­mand Span­ish.  I have instructed ESL and founded a local Down­town Span­ish Lan­guage Club for native and non-native Span­ish speak­ers to retain, pro­mote, and enhance lan­guage skills through cul­tural dialog.

I sit on sev­eral edu­ca­tion, diver­sity and work­force related boards and advi­sory com­mit­tees and fre­quently speak on job seek­ing, recruit­ment and reten­tion strat­egy, rela­tion­ship build­ing and the use of new media in HR and recruiting.

After hours when I’m not exer­cis­ing those super pow­ers, I develop this site’s con­tent, exper­i­ment with the lat­est and great­est new media and social net­work­ing appli­ca­tions and hang out vir­tu­ally with HR and Recruiter types where we stretch the bound­aries of our pro­fes­sions and strive to make them better.

Get onboard the change train and enjoy the ride — Karla

2010

2009