Community Spotlight: Finding Advocates in your Company

February 1st, 2021

Community Spotlight: A series highlighting Aspire to Her community members and their experiences early in their careers.

Who we’re featuring this week: Savannah Hall
Position: Commercial Business Partner at Travelopia

In 2017, you moved to Ireland, a country where you did not know anyone, and successfully landed a job as a Financial Analyst at a large international tour operator. Over the past 3 years, you have been promoted twice and are now managing a team as well. What have you learned about building & maintaining a network and how it impacts your career?

My first job at Travelopia was a temporary contract as an assistant finance business partner with an option to extend based on performance. I distinctly recall the hiring manager at the time asking if I was okay with that, and I replied that I was confident my ability to immediately add value and show that I should be hired fulltime. At that point – the point of hire – I identified the hiring manager as key to my success and within 6 weeks I was hired on a full-time basis and dropped the ‘assistant’ part of the title. The same manager that hired me then advocated for me and, perhaps more importantly, included me in strategic conversations. Therefore, when opportunities came to advance within my company, I was already in the mix.

You often hear the anecdote of “right place, right time” but its seldom discussed how important it is to constantly keep yourself in the vicinity of the right place at all times. Throughout my career I have made it a priority to build trust and relationships with not only my direct managers, but with leaders in all areas of the business. This, again, ensured I was already on a short list to lead any new projects that would arise.

More recently I’ve been trying to take this a step further by actively engaging in conversations with my manager about my long term goals and how I’d like to develop. When plans for a new role didn’t materialize last year in light of COVID19, we continued to engage in conversation about other development opportunities in the meantime. Then in November, a new role as lead Commercial Business Partner across all the brands of the Tailormade travel division came up. This was a manager role with a notably larger undertaking, and though it aligned with my long-term goals, it was a big step up from my current job. This is where all the advocates I’d been developing for the past few years came in, including my original hiring manager. They vouched for me and they believed in me, making it easier for my new team to do the same. All of this despite the fact that a lot of what I would be doing would be new to me.

What is your advice for someone who wants to build a network in a new area, whether it be in a new company, industry, state, or even country?

My biggest piece of advice is: Do not neglect the vast network within your own company. I often find people think of networking as solely connecting with people outside their immediate work circles. Sure, reaching out to people at other companies is valuable, but at the end of the day the person you already work for likely has a much bigger part to play in how quickly you move up and where you move up to.

Particularly when you are in a new place, it is easier to network with people you are already exposed to every day! One thing I like to do is volunteer my excel skills out to anyone who will listen, both to help build relationships and to show my work product to people who normally wouldn’t get to see it.

This helped me grow a vast network after moving to Dublin three years ago having never even visited Ireland before. And importantly, this also helped me find advocates. Your advocates, like mine, often make more valuable introductions and connections for you than you could easily make for yourself.

If you’re interested in sharing a career experience/lessons learned with other Aspire to Her community members, please fill out this quick form!