FutureYou Recruitment Origin story: Planning or passion - what really shapes a great career? Mim Haysom, Suncorp

Origin story: Planning or passion - what really shapes a great career? Mim Haysom, Suncorp

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Mim Haysom is a respected change and transformation leader. As the CMO and EGM for Brand & Marketing at Suncorp, Mim is one of the executives responsible for steering the insurance giant into a brave, new, customer centric world. 

Mim's career success is fairly well known and very much respected. Emily Wilson wanted to get to the bottom of where Mim's passion and drive came from, and how much planning went into this brilliant career.

Mim Haysom: I never grew up thinking that you couldn't be anything that you wanted to be. 

But if you wanted to be something - you had to work hard at it.

'Did you have a plan?' People ask me this question quite often, and I didn't really.

I knew that I wanted to be in this industry and I knew that I wanted to elevate up and one day run a business, but I didn't have a well-defined road-map. The approach that I took was really; 

If you have a job, get in, love it, work really hard at it, and be really great at it - and then you'll grow from that. Opportunities will come from that.

So, I'm probably not a role model in 'career mapping' because I actually never did that. I just focused on the tasks I had at hand and worked really hard and loved what I did, and ended up getting taken with people quite a lot on my career journey.

Emily Wilson: Where do you think your own personal drive and determination has come from?

Mim Haysom: I probably think from my mother, to be honest with you. I grew up and both of my parents worked. My mother was in a marketing role for an organisation that was in the fashion industry. 

I grew up with her, and not just mum but also her girlfriends and her network as my role models. 

I saw firsthand the satisfaction and the joy they got from that. But also the effort that they put into it to get that satisfaction out of it.

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