That first job was for sickness cover.

One week.

I took the bus to the North of Dublin every day and was the best receptionist I knew how to be; taking notes when people rang, greeting everyone who came through the door, passing on telephone messages while comprehensively decimating the Irish spelling of every name in the office.

SHIN-ADE, anyone? Or is ROE-SHEEN in today?

My well-intentioned messages were received in good humour, even as they destroyed the integrity of the Irish language entirely.

Perhaps not what they'd expected from a young woman born as Suzanne Doyle.

But I got placed there.

And then again the week after.

And the week after that, eventually going through many postings until I could talk my way into a role where I actually wanted to be; Trinity College Dublin.

When I finally asked the agency what had changed, they admitted, a little sheepishly, that at first they simply hadn't known how I'd be in a placement.

A catch 22 if ever I heard of one!

What had won them over was embarrassingly simple: I had turned up. Every single day.

Even at the same employers other temps had left early, because as the departed temps, my peers, complained to the agency: 'the work was boring'.

One of the agency staff put it to me like this: "Maybe you can't spell, or even pronounce Irish names and your typing's rubbish, but everyone says how pleasant you always are when people come in.

She continued: "You're always happy to have a chat about what you love about the city and how you've been exploring, like the Giant's Causeway. It reminds them, what makes Ireland so magic."

She then explained: "That's hard to beat for an hardened office worked who's always known the city. One even said your enthusiasm was 'infectious', which is why it's easy to place you now."

Given I'd barely turned 22 and had never set foot in Europe before, of course I could only see the magic!

Even the street sweepers of Temple Bar left the streets so gleaming, there was not even a hint of what had gone on the night before!

That part wasn't a strategy.

But the turning up, even to 'boring jobs' was.

So persistence and even reliability are what win the game, for me, and for a great many of my clients.

Believe me, I know they are not the sexiest qualities a person can have.

After all, nobody puts "earnest" on their vision board.

But those two words are the brand I'm happy to own, because they are the ones that actually moved me from a hostel to Trinity College, one stubbornly cheerful morning greeting at a time.

After all, wasn't it another Irish immigrant, Oscar Wilde, who reminded us of 'The Importance of Being Earnest'?

Maybe you can relate?

So many of the senior women I coach have been waiting, quietly, to be noticed for exactly these qualities: the showing up, the steadiness, the being-good-to-work-with, and wondering why the recognition never quite arrives on its own.

The waiting feels reasonable. It rarely works.

What worked, it turns out, was sitting in the chair, knowing they were lucky to have you; they just didn't know it yet.

If you're tired of waiting to be noticed, my free Women in Tech Promotion Playbook is the practical version of everything I learned the long way round: how senior women get past being doubted, position themselves with the people who decide promotions, and stop waiting to be noticed for work that should speak for itself.

You can download it here.

I also write about this kind of thing weekly in my newsletter, usually before I've worked out the tidy version.

You can subscribe on the front page of this website.

And if the showing-up has started to feel like waiting: for a promotion, a champion, a fairy god-boss who never quite materialises, that's the work I do one to one.

If this resonated, I write about moments like this every week, the ones senior women in STEM recognise immediately and hadn't quite named yet.

Real stories, fresh client insights, and the conversation most people around you aren't having, or sharing.

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