Katie Smith is the founder and Chief Enabled Careerist at Careerable.
At Careerable, Katie helps individuals become “enabled careerists” by equipping them with the skills and tools they need to excel in today’s 21st-century career landscape.
Her mission is to help others define and strive for their own personal definition of professional success.
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KATIE SMITH CAREER JOURNEY
Like most communication majors, Katie was looking forward to starting her career in public relations. But in her final year at college, she was recruited into a fellowship program in Indianapolis.
The program's goal was to place graduates of Indiana universities with high growth companies. Shortly, after joining the program, Katie accepted a rotational position the email marketing company Exact Target.
One of her rotations was with Human resources in college recruiting. This position fueled a passion in Katie Smith she didn't know she had.
During her time with the company, Katie worked in various roles within HR including recruiting, leadership and professional development but the part she really enjoyed and what she always seemed to come back to, was career coaching.
To start the business, Katie knew she would need to change her circles and began looking online for opportunities and/or others doing the work she wanted to go do.
She eventually found some online role models she could identify with and reached out to them for assistance. And so it began, while maintaining the day job, Katie started quietly following the advice of her online role models and began to slowly build her business.
BUILDING A CAREER COACHING BUSINESS
As she was building her business, Katie did all of the usual things like investing in her website but she also used, this time, to develop and vet out her coaching process.
To gain confidence, Katie tested her process on a couple of pro bono clients. Ironically, even though she was already working with clients, Katie, like all of us who start side businesses, struggled to get past the dreaded imposter syndrome.
For those who don't know, imposter syndrome is that point in your journey when you start to doubt yourself and your abilities. You question everything and start to tell yourself things like, what are thinking? Or you're not qualified to do this.”
If you listen to the voice of self-doubt, that believes it is trying to keep you safe as Heather Havenwood told us during our discussion, you may never move forward.
You'll continue to make up excuses for yourself such as I'm not qualified because I don't have the right certifications, or not enough certifications, etc.
All of these excuses, come down to one thing, you are waiting for permission from someone.
Katie Smith was feeling all of these emotions as she was building her business. They were so strong she even went to the point of keeping her business secret from everyone during this time.
But, despite these feelings, Katie pushed forward and acquired the certifications she felt she needed for her to start her business.
It wasn't until a conversation with an old friend that Katie openly admitted she wanted to be a career coach. His response was to tell her he'd hire her.
Confidence in place, proof of concept verified and process vetted out, Katie moved forward and launched her business.
Ironically, her first client ended up being the husband, of a woman Katie had hired into the new grad program and who had built her website.
Can you see her network at work here? What could your network do for you?
KATIE SMITH CAREER COACHING
Katie views career coaching more like career discovery. It's the combination of career development, answering the what do I want to do with my life and job searching.
Katie works mostly with 20 to 30 years old but she also works with a fair amount of career changers who don’t know what LinkedIn is or don’t see the value in the platform. Twitter? Forget about it.
As a career coach Katie serves as a partner to help her clients on their journey using her 4-step process, she calls A.B.L.E. which is an acronym for Analyze, Brand, Leverage, and Embark .
4-Step CareerABLE Process
Analyze:
This step requires the most time commitment but it is also the most important. Katie’s clients are required to identify their personal mission statement during this step. Katie explains the point of the Analyze step is to determine what you want your life to look like and how your career fits into that vision.
During this step, you will reach out to others to help you identify your values, skills, and strengths. This is very similar to what Scott Barlow and I discussed during our conversation.
Additionally, you’ll identify your ideal job or working conditions and Katie has her clients take The Birkman Method during this step as well.
Similar to Myers-Briggs, the Birkman looks at a variety of things like your interests but where it differs is with the job report it generates. Based on your assessment responses, the job report will suggest potential career paths and/or jobs you should consider.
Brand:
Katie reviews both the online and offline brand of her clients. This includes reviewing the resume, LinkedIn profiles, and social media accounts not only for current content but to ensure they are aligned with the direction you identified in the Analyze step.
Additionally during the Brand step, Katie works with her clients to help them articulate what they want both online and offline.
Leverage:
Katie has a saying for the leverage step, “leverage your network, learn through relationships”. In Leverage, her clients begin to use their network to help them determine what they want and maybe more importantly, what they don’t want from their career.
You may remember Olivia Gamber taking about scheduling coffee meetings with people who hold positions you are interested in. This is the same concept and, yes, this is the networking step. You will need to reach out to others and have conversations.
If you struggle with networking, Katie suggests you redefine it to how you can add value to others not how many business cards you can hand out.
Embark:
Embark is all about taking action. This is also where from an accountability standpoint, a career coach can add a lot of value. They will act as an accountability partner, just like a coach at the gym.
All along the way Katie has helped her clients develop an action plan for finding their next position. During Embark, she provides them with the reassurance and accountability needed to execute against the plan.
THE BEST WAYS TO REACH KATIE SMITH OF CAREERABLE
Web: careerable.com
Twitter: @careerablecoach
Email: katie@careerable.com
