“We have so many powerful women throughout our department, it’s a true testament to AO” – Ashleigh’s Story

I’m Ashleigh, and I joined AO in April 2021 as a Pricing Administrator on a 12 month fixed term contract. I was furloughed for 8 months during the COVID 19 pandemic and wanted to make use of the Business Administration apprenticeship I had recently completed. I did research on companies nearby and AO really stuck out to me. I found articles and reviews about how it was one of the best places to work and knew it was somewhere I could see myself. I had never worked in an office before and expected it to be a little slow, but I was so wrong, they don’t call it AO speed for nothing! I loved the fast pace, enthusiastic, growing culture. I was soon made a permanent member of staff and I was ecstatic to officially be part of the AO family.

Whilst in the commercial department, I moved up to be a Commercial Analyst, working within our pricing team and later within our B2B team. I got exposure to all different areas of the business and learnt how things were done, the AO way. During my time in commercial we had a project on to upgrade one of our systems, this meant I spent quite a bit of time with one of the business analysts in tech, to give my user needs. It was during these sessions that sparked my interest in tech. I reached out to the business analyst and she told me that they do mentorships, so naturally I jumped at the opportunity! Around 7 months into my mentoring, a job role opened up and I became a Junior BA for the basket and checkout team.

My job role is essentially like a bridge between tech and the rest of the business. It’s my job to understand requirements of projects from stakeholders and work with my development team to highlight constraints and processes of their requirements. I work closely with Project Managers, Delivery Leads, Tech Leads and UX designers to orchestrate big projects, as well as bring in small change directly to the team. When my calendar isn’t full of meetings, it’s full of creating tickets for developers to work on and investigating requirements.

Being a woman in tech at AO feels completely natural. We have so many powerful women throughout our department, it’s a true testament to AO. It shows that women are comfortable and confident to push for their dreams here.

I have to say though, my very favourite thing about AO is the people. I have met some wonderful friends in all different departments and I come to work knowing I’m going to speak to people I enjoy working with. The BA community itself is very close, we make sure to spend quality time together and even have our own buddies we catch up with weekly! The support in tech is next level, there’s not a single person I feel like I couldn’t speak to. And being a BA means you get to talk to almost all the business areas, getting exposure to what everyone does!

As of writing this, I am now a week into being promoted to a fully fledged Business Analyst! My next steps are to continue improving on myself to be the best BA I can be, whilst learning about other areas of the business and how they function so I can add valuable input and experience in future projects. I can’t wait to see what lies ahead!