From newspaper job ads to Kickstarter campaigns
Ever wondered how people got to where they are today in their career? Where did they start and what were they thinking at the time? In this series, professionals from all walks of life look back at their start and share some lessons they wish they’d known back then.
In this Career Talk, we are joined by Carole Picou-Katmann. I first met Carole when we were both in the marketing team of an Amsterdam-based tech company. What struck me immediately about her was her energy and enthusiasm, which she always put to good use, driving her team forward towards reaching their goals. Whenever I was around her, I felt like I had to bring my A-game, which always stretched me to achieve more than I would have otherwise.
When you read the interview, you will see Carole describing herself as a fast thinker and a straight shooter – and it is these qualities that we can learn from, as we read her career story.
Carole describes herself as an intrapreneur by day and an entrepreneur by night. Her marketing career has taken her all the way from New York to Amsterdam and from Uber to starting her own company. By day, she is the Senior Marketing Director EMEA at Clearco, and by night she is the CEO of SØDE Design, a Scandinavian-inspired, sustainable cat furniture company.
If you love what Carole has to say – and share her love of furry friends – consider supporting her Kickstarter campaign for SØDE Design, which you can learn all about if you scroll all the way down on this page.
Enjoy!
Click the button below to listen to the full story, or scroll down to read the written Q&A.
Nico: How did you get your first job?
Carole: It’s going to sound like I'm a dinosaur. I really wanted to move to Canada, and I had done an internship in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, the main town is called Sherbrooke. I had some connections there; they were friends of my family’s as well. They helped me secure a job through a newspaper ad – a good old newspaper ad.
I stayed there for a year being a key account manager for European companies. It was an insurance business. It was a bit of a leap of faith because I sent my resume from France, where I was living at the time, and they were looking for someone who spoke French, German and English. I applied and I guess where they were located it was hard to find somebody like this. Plus, I had all the paperwork also done and dusted, so I could go. I took a chance on it.
Nico: How did you get your first promotion?
Carole: I didn't really, I've never really looked for promotions. When I graduated business school, I didn't plan to be the VP of marketing in a company. Instead, I just wanted to do something that I was enthusiastic about. That's what matters to me.
I progressed in my career by changing a couple of jobs. After Canada, I went to work in New York, for a startup. I was doing many things there because we were quite a small team. There was no promotion, so to speak, but I was getting raises every year and more responsibility. And then I went back to school, did my MBA, and then I went job hopping. And that's how I progressed.
The first time I officially got a promotion is when I got hired as a senior online manager - that's how the title was called at the time. The plan was that as soon as I launched their ecommerce website; I would become a director. That was the first time I had that as a goal. Once I achieved this objective, then I could get a promotion.
In the end, it's not the title that works for me. I'm more excited about what the task at hand is.
Nico: What is the most important lesson you learned in your career so far?
Carole: It's a bit cynical, but I think that being promoted, being successful, and friendly doesn't always work. Even if you're doing a good job, you can get let go. You can get on people's nerves, especially when you're an agent of change, which I think I've been hired to be quite a couple of times.
What I learned is that there's formal authority and then there’s informal authority. Informal authority is almost more important than formal authority. When I say formal authority, I mean that people can report to you but being a leader doesn't totally always go hand in hand with being a manager. You can manage someone, but you may not have any leadership, or you need to work on that.
Leader and manager are not synonyms for me. I think that's my most important lesson, and the reason why I feel I got let go a couple of times. It's not because you are a loser, it's not because you're lazy. It's just because the organization wants you to go a certain way and you disagreed, or the organization had to evolve a certain way. For me, it was about doing your best in the job, but it doesn't secure the job.
Nico: What is the hardest career lesson you had to learn so far? What do you see now that you did not when you were in it?
Carole: The hardest career lesson I had to learn is that no matter how good you are at your job, it's never secured. You can go from hero to zero in a day. Every time it happened; it came a bit as a surprise. It was a very sudden process to me.
What I learned is that when you take a position where you are being asked to evolve, to take risks, create new capabilities, you're going to rub people the wrong way. Not everyone's going to like you, and you're going to have to be fine with this.
What I would love to tell my 30-year-old self is to be more patient and empathetic. Not everyone can see what you see, don't take it for granted. Sometimes you must repeat to educate people and not lose your patience.
Nico: What is a career advice you would give your younger self?
Carole: Communicate. Overcommunicate. Try to take people on your journey, even if it's taking longer than you expected. That's really something that I was probably not very good at, and that I'm still working on.
I'm a fast thinker. I'm a straight shooter as well, this is something I need to polish. My political abilities are always something that I would consider as a weakness. Because with me what you see is what you get, and it might come across as a bit unpolished. I think I'm becoming better at it, but it's still a work in progress.
PS. If you love what Carole had to say – and share her love of furry friends – consider supporting her Kickstarter campaign for SØDE Design.
