Like many people, Sue Jones – Airwave’s Director of Marketing – didn’t have a grand plan on how her career would pan out.
“I fell into marketing, to be honest. When I was at school, studying, marketing was never a career that was considered or even mentioned. So it wasn’t until I was a sponsored student at IBM that I came across marketing and actually really enjoyed all the different elements.”
However, she admits she owes a lot to the people who helped her in her early career once she’d started out on her marketing path.“I actually had people who sponsored me – so people who helped me, guided me, told me the areas I needed to develop or study and who helped me on the next steps up the career ladder.”
Given the impact these sponsors played on her career, Sue advises anyone starting out to find someone who can really help you. But what kind of person should you be looking for? “Somebody who knows what to do and how to take steps, because trying to do that on your own and managing that minefield in a corporate environment can be quite daunting to begin with,” is Sue’s advice.
Finding the right person to be your mentor is not without its challenges. So how did Sue achieve it? “I’m naturally curious, I go and ask lots of different questions and I seek out who the people are in different areas of the business.”
By trying to understand lots of different parts of the business and engineering ways to make herself known to key influencers Sue was able to find the right leaders to help open new doors for her. And, whilst it’s not always a straight-forward process, by working hard to position herself in the same meetings or environment as them Sue was able to get talking to them and take charge of her career destiny.
“It takes some courage but I think if you’re really serious about progressing you sometimes need to have that courage and lose those inhibitions just to be able to get to those people who you think can help you.”
