Guest Blog: You can do it too! Learnings from my career journey.

By Ashleigh Ayers

Things weren’t going well …

At 18 I landed what I thought was my dream job. Running conferences, gala dinners and awards nights; I’d completed several diplomas and was really proud of how I’d been able to get my career on track. Then reality hit – minimum wage, late home every night and weekends, I soon realised that with events roles being limited it was easy to take advantage of someone who was young and ambitious. Over time my friends and family started to worry about me, I knew it wasn’t sustainable and I had to make the difficult decision to leave.

Having never quit a job before I wasn’t prepared for how lost I would feel and I had no idea of where to start. My confidence to apply for another events role was gone and there were very few I could apply for. After a couple of days at home feeling sorry for myself, I thought I’d better get out there again, I applied for an admin role. That’s when I met Sandra from Recruitment Central. She was such a support and her positivity made me feel hopeful – it wasn’t long until she had options for me.

Things started looking up …

I interviewed for an administration role at an ASX listed company. It obviously went well because they took me on a tour of the office afterwards to show me where I would be sitting. The office was buzzing. From day one, I knew it was going to be an amazing opportunity. I had my own car park and all the on-the-job training you could dream of.

Looking back, this role was the launch pad for the rest of my career. I remember focusing on getting through my own work so I could spend more time on sales presentations, events or assisting the state manager. There was a never ending stream of jobs to be done and I was more than willing to put my hand up to take them on.

Three years later saw me matured, confident and wanting to get back to my dream career in events and marketing. I landed Events and Marketing Coordinator role, clicked with the Marketing Manager instantly and the rest is history!

So far, so good …

The next three years saw me managing the end to end events and marketing across multiple event brands, I was thrown in the deep end, but thanks to great leadership I learnt so much, especially about the tech industry. Since then I’ve worked in startup land and worked with an AI company with a small team of 4, to 35+ across Australia and the US- this was eventually acquired by a competitor, definitely my greatest challenge yet.

Now I’m working with another amazing home-grown Aussie SaaS company with larger than life goals.

You can do it too …

If you feel like you have what it takes and you’re just not sure where to start, my advice is Start Small in a Big Team, work hard and build a reputation for yourself.

Leaders (well, good leaders) will do whatever they can to help you get to where you need to be. Just be willing to voice what your goals are and put in the work.

I also highly recommend taking some free online courses in your spare time. My interest was marketing, however you can learn almost anything on YouTube or through resources like edX by Harvard.

The work never stops or gets easier, but life is more exciting. I’ve had so many amazing experiences in my career and I cannot wait to see what’s to come.