The Power of Connections

Every year since leaving school (quite a while ago now ??)? it has increasingly dawned on me how powerful connections and the saying ‘its not what you know, its who you know’ really are; however this year was the year I realised they are pinnacle.?

This dawned on me in March 2023 when I landed the role of Marketing & Operations Manager at MAP TALENT , so let me start from the beginning.

In January 2023, I left the UK to travel South East Asia with my two very close friends whom I actually started reception with 21 years ago, we have remained friends ever since. My decision to go travelling was made not even 2 months before my departure date meaning in prior months I hadn’t been stringently saving to travel. However, within the two months I did manage to get a comfortable amount of money together so that I could leave without stressing too much about my spends.

Forward just one week later, a week into our travels which started? in Thailand it come to light, we hadn’t really grasped the idea of ‘budgeting’ (lol) and this problem then carried on for the next 8 weeks. By the time March came, my two friends were in need of a trip home back to the UK to top back up their funds, I on the other hand, decided otherwise.

Although I could have also done with a travel fund top up, I knew I wasn’t ready to return home just yet, but knew I didn’t want to continue to travel South East Asia alone without my two friends. I had always had Australia as the end goal; now was my time to take the plunge. My friends headed back to the UK while I hesitantly headed to Sydney, Australia on my own (they thought I was mad). Looking back, I was actually very calm (some may call it delusional ??) considering I didn’t have a comfortable amount of money left, no job and no house to go to, but as always I was manifesting that everything would work out and if it didn’t it wasn’t meant to be.

This is where the power of connections came into play....

I put a post out on LinkedIn announcing my arrival date in Sydney and my need for a job. David Doherty a connection in the UK introduced me to MAP TALENT , who then got in touch and asked me to call in for a casual chat. I turned up to this ‘casual chat’ with absolutely no expectation other than they was kindly going to give me helping hand and some advice on how to find a job in Sydney. Anyway, I walked out of this ‘casual chat’ with a job at MAP TALENT (I can obviously talk the talk ??) which was exactly suited to me just 3 DAYS after I landed in Australia with initially no job and a very dented bank account.?

This was this moment that I realised the power of connections really are invaluable.

It baffles me how networking and making connections isn’t a more prominent topic within schools and that we aren’t educated around this, I?was only first introduced to this in my last year of university (age 21) after in-depth? tutorial. So, my number one piece of advice to schoolies, college students or even people who haven’t started to network as they have got older is DO IT, you never know when ‘Its not what you know, its who you know’ can be of help to you and I wish I would have known sooner.

If it wasn’t for the power of connections, I would have now most probably been enduring the freezing cold UK winter (which makes me very grateful for the daily sunsets and sunrises in ????)