Career Coaching Secrets

Beyond Certifications: Aleksandar Cakic on Real-World Coaching Value

• Davis Nguyen

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Host Rexhen Doda interviews Aleksandar Cakic, a backend software engineer at LinkedIn and career coach. Aleksandar, who helped develop LinkedIn's AI coaching tools, discusses his journey from various industries to tech and how he now mentors professionals into successful careers.

He emphasizes the deep human connection in coaching, helping clients beyond just career goals. His diverse client base is unified by their intention to work with a coach, with many seeking to transition into tech.

Aleksandar offers one-on-one and group coaching, distinguishing between structured mentoring and deeper, question-driven coaching. His marketing relies heavily on LinkedIn and referrals. He's currently focused on personal branding and providing valuable, free content to attract new clients. He advocates for coaches to invest in a mentor and maintain client relationships beyond formal engagements.

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Aleksandar Cakic:

One thing that I've noticed in this space, at least with me and a couple of other people who have career coaches, is that you have this fantastic work relationship for about three months, four months, six months, whatever. And then once the challenge has been completed, once all the milestones have been checked off, it just falls through. Maintain that connection. Connect with your clients more on a human level. Make the whole experience a little bit more relatable. little boy.

Davis Nguyen:

Welcome to Career Coaching Secrets, the podcast where we talk with successful career coaches on how they built their success and the hard lessons they learned along the way. My name is Davis Nguyen, and I'm the founder of Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to $100,000 years, $100,000 months, and even $100,000 weeks. Before Purple Circle, I've grown several seven and eight figure career coaching business myself, and I've been a consultant at two career coaching businesses that are doing over a hundred million dollars each. Whether you're an established coach or building your practice for the first time, you'll discover the secrets to elevating your coaching business. Nice.

Rexhen Doda:

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Career Coaching Secrets Podcast. I'm your host, Rejan, and today's guest is Alexander Takish, a backend software engineer at LinkedIn and career coach whose work sits at the intersection of scalable backend systems and AI innovation. Alexander played a key role in developing LinkedIn's AI coaching tools, helped secure a 21 million enterprise contract through technical leadership, and has mentored over 30 professionals into successful tech careers through his structured and deeply personal coaching approach. Whether he's migrating complex schemas, launching voice-enabled learning products, or guiding career changers into engineering roles, Alexander brings a rare blend of technical depth, product impact, and a human-centered mentorship to everything he does. And it's a pleasure for me to have him on the podcast today. Welcome to the show, Alexander. Thank you for having me. It's a this all got started. As a software engineer, I've had the chance to only interview one coach that was focused on helping software engineer managers get to their next level on their company. So basically go up the company ladder from the manager to director or something like that. Since then, I haven't had the chance to interview someone in the same niche. So I wanted to know what inspired you to become a coach and then start your own coaching business.

Aleksandar Cakic:

Yeah, so it's actually a lot of small events that started all the way from college to different career pivots that I had. My background is in marketing And from there, I went into logistics, retail, and at the end, I landed in tech about four years ago. So throughout this journey, I learned a lot about navigating my career, what works, what doesn't work, and then made changes along the way. At LinkedIn, we have a very strong supportive network. So this is where a lot of things changed for me. I realized that I had a lot of assumptions or maybe limiting beliefs about how a career works, how a manager or director So being exposed to a very supportive network where I had career coaches, mentors, both technical and on the soft skill side, really helped me to dispel those limiting beliefs and get a firm understanding of how to navigate my career in a more active way. So in life, there's a lot of things that we cannot control. So war, inflation, AI revolution, and all those things. The one thing that we can control is how we navigate our careers. If you do it in an active way, and if you continuously learn about your career and what possibilities are out there, it's going to help make

Rexhen Doda:

the rest of your life a little bit easier. Thank you. Thanks so much for sharing that. So when you're working with a client and going through your coaching journey with them, which part of that coaching journey do you find the most rewarding?

Aleksandar Cakic:

For me, I deeply care about all my clients and I don't say that very lightly. I've noticed that career coaching is not an isolated event. Someone might show up and even though they want to talk only career, as we dive into our sessions, you realize that, oh, there's a lot more going on here. Tell me about this aspect of your life or they will just open up and start sharing everything else that's impacting their career. So having that human connection makes me feel that I'm actively on the journey with them as if it's my own journey and I want to see them win. I want to help them to achieve those goals and to see what's possible even beyond that.

Rexhen Doda:

Cool. And so just for the audience and that portion of the audience that might be interested, who is your ideal client profile? How would you describe that?

Aleksandar Cakic:

We don't really have an ideal client profile from the point of view of like you're in this stage of life in your career or you're looking to go from this role to this role. to that role. It's more about the intention behind it. If you're warm as a person, if you're interested in working with a career coach, we start you off with a discovery session, 30-minute friendly chat. It's no package, no nothing. It's just, I want to get to know you on a human level. And if we click, we can do something about the challenges you're facing or the goals that you may have. I've had clients that were new grads trying to break into tech with no I've had people who were PhD graduates looking for a career pivot or to advance in their roles. I've had a couple of managers. Who else was there? So it's just like different facets of life. And it's not just about job search. Some clients wanted to learn how to have difficult conversations when it comes to promotion, performance, visibility, et cetera.

Rexhen Doda:

When it comes to industries, is it just tech or is not specific only to tech?

Aleksandar Cakic:

It's not just tech. It was tech. There were a couple of people in healthcare, marketing as well. But for the most part, what I've noticed is that maybe because I'm a software engineer, a lot of people are inquiring about switching to tech or switching into that space, even though their roles were not

Rexhen Doda:

technical. Cool. Thank you. Thanks so much for sharing that. And how would you describe the engagement of working with you? Is there a certain program of a certain length? How would you describe that engagement with the client?

Aleksandar Cakic:

Yeah. So we start off with a discovery call, as I mentioned. So 30 minutes, just chat about whatever you'd like. And then from there, what I'm trying to understand is with the tools and knowledge that I have, can I do something for this person? And then if it's yes, then we go and figure out how to go about it. For some people, one-on-one coaching works well. And we have those sessions where we would meet once a week or twice a week, depending on what they would like. For other they need a community support. So we have group sessions where it's usually like eight to 10 people where we meet once a week and we chat about the career challenges, goals, and we try to build a strong and powerful network. The main idea here is what I'm looking for when I meet with a client is, can I help them? And do they prefer a structured or unstructured coaching? So what I mean by this, a lot of clients, they show up and they say, Okay, I want to get a job in two months or in three months. Get me there. I don't need understanding. I don't need to dive deep into myself. I just want step-by-step instruction on how to do this. You can ask ChatGPT and get a similar response. You know, it's more of a mentoring and guided approach rather than actual career coaching. So that's an option if the client wants to go in that direction. What's preferred is for us to actually dive deeper into who you are as a person, where you would like to go, which your career? What's going on in the current environment, career and life? And then what will the new environment bring that will make your life or your lifestyle better, where you'd be happier, more motivated and more excited to be? So when you approach it in this way, it's not me giving you directions how to navigate your career. It's me asking you questions and you coming up with your own answer that works best.

Rexhen Doda:

Absolutely. I also find that when it comes to coaching, is mostly about the questions and the right questions at the right time. And I feel like we live right now in a world where questions have a lot more value than answers since like there's AI, chat GPT, you can, or like there's so many places where you can find the answer if you actually have the question. But if you didn't have the question, there's like these unknowns that kind of like remain unsolved unless someone actually triggers you to think differently, which is where a coach comes from. So yeah, I really like that.

Aleksandar Cakic:

Exactly. And this is where the power of coaching comes in. I had a friend the other day that asked me, hey, I'm in marketing and I'm looking to switch into tech and I want to do a coding bootcamp. What do you think? So if I take off the coaching hat and I just speak like a friend, I'm going to say one of two things. Yeah, go for it. You'll do well. It'll be fine. Just trust yourself. Or I can say it's not a good idea. The It might be tricky to go with that side. Still, that's a very limited interaction with a very limited context. And I'm not doing that person any favors. That person, every one of us, we have a gut feeling that we know that, hey, this will or will not work or this is the right way to do things. But if I take a step back and I listen and I ask follow-up questions to that, it's like, okay, where are you right now in marketing? What is a challenge that's making you want to switch into tech? Have you considered other routes? What else is out there as a path to tech? Why boot camps? Why this? And as you learn more about the person and they share more, they're going to find the answer themselves. This is also very common in therapy. When a person starts talking, they might say, oh, I want to solve problem X. But the more they talk and the more they open up, it's like a yarn that you keep pulling away and away and away. And you realize that as you're peeling it, there's so much more to this. And the answer that you're seeking for or the challenge you're trying to solve might not be the one you started

Rexhen Doda:

with. Absolutely. I totally agree with that. A question that comes to mind is, and this is going to be helpful for other coaches that are listening. When it comes to the clients that you work with so far, where have you found the marketing channel? Have you found to be more successful for you so far?

Aleksandar Cakic:

So when I started this coaching journey, I realized that as I learned more with my career coaches and mentors, that my understanding of career was different than that of my friends. So I started helping them out. And then once I realized that, okay, this format works and the way I'm going about it works, I reached out to other career coaches and mentors on LinkedIn primarily to see if anyone will be able to share their experience or mentor me and to figure out like, you know, am I doing things well? Is there something that I'm missing as a career coach? Do I need to go for this type of training or this type of workshop? And then without sharing, obviously, personal details of the sessions, I would say, This is how the session went. This is what I felt. This is what the client felt. How do I make this better? So I found support through LinkedIn, where I found other coaches and communities. I've been active on different coaching platforms, one of them being Mentor Cruise. And I've interacted with coaches that also use other platforms. platforms like Torch, LinkedIn, internal coaching network and support as well. And then this was over the last few years. Right now, what I'm doing is I'm trying to figure out with a specific challenge that I'm working with right now in the coaching space, who is a leader in that space, I would find them on LinkedIn, I would send a message to connect and chat for a few minutes. And this works, I would say for me

Rexhen Doda:

90% of the time. Oh, wow. Thank you. Thanks so much for sharing that. So right now, would you say that there's a portion of your clients that is coming from referrals, but there's also a portion that is coming actually from LinkedIn?

Aleksandar Cakic:

Yes. Yeah. Portions from referrals. And I think most of them right now are from LinkedIn.

Rexhen Doda:

And how does the platform you mentioned initially work? What was it? I forgot the name.

Aleksandar Cakic:

Mentor Cruise is a platform where it's less coaching and more mentoring. It's something that I've used initially. So it's essentially you create a profile with what you like to offer and what you like to price. And then mentees create their own profiles and they seek out coaches and they search for what makes sense and what they're looking for. It's mostly tech oriented. There's a lot of competition, but it's a great way for people who are looking to start as coaches to see what's out there, to figure out initial pricing strategy or have a couple of intro sessions without figuring out how to get clients from zero.

Rexhen Doda:

Cool. Thank you. Thank you for sharing all of this. So right now, how do you see your coaching business in the future? Like looking into the next one to three years, do you have any specific goals that you're working towards?

Aleksandar Cakic:

So right now, what we're trying to do, we have a website, career-flow.com, which I will share with you later. What we're focusing on is really building that personal brand and primary platforms are going to be the website and LinkedIn as well. And one thing that I've learned from a couple of workshops that I've done in conferences, it really helps to share free content with potential clients or anyone that's interested in this space, but not necessarily spamming people left and right, or just sharing those snippets of knowledge that everyone knows it's out there. No, like doing something that is really meaningful that will give someone a wow moment. So this is something that I'm focusing on. Frequently, we have workshops for optimizing your resume for visibility, LinkedIn profile updates with a backed up data that says, hey, here are the studies that were done. Here is, you know, if you update these sections of LinkedIn, it's going to work in your favor. Understanding all the tools that LinkedIn has for job seekers, which is plenty. And a lot of the people are not aware of what they are and how to use them. Those things, AI tools, referrals, networking, etc. What I try to do is obviously if we have workshops, it's probably going to come at a one time fee. Sometimes we do discounts. Sometimes we do fully free workshops and there's no signups, no other commitment. Just show up and have fun. You know, what we're seeing right now in tech is that a lot of people are getting laid off left and right. I have a structured format to help someone who has been through that process. And this is, you know, it's just there. It's like, here you go at your own pace. Good luck. If you need extra support in terms of free resources, reach out. Always happy to help because especially in that situation, it's very impactful. So I want to make sure that I'm giving back to the community.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you. Thanks so much for sharing it. So right now, And this goes back to the research that I mentioned. What have been some good investments that you've made in your coaching business or in yourself? And that could be investments such as like coaching programs, masterminds, communities, or anything that comes to mind, really, that you feel like, oh, that was actually a good investment. There's potentially some good return on it too. And if any, what have been some investments that you could have potentially avoided? In terms of...

Aleksandar Cakic:

I'm going to talk about in terms of opportunities. There's a lot of, I had a lot of assumptions and limiting beliefs of how any of this works. So one thing I wish I would have done differently is to start much sooner, start even smaller and then go from there. In terms of investments that did work is finding a coach or mentor to guide you through all of this. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. You can go with AI tools. By all means, you're going to learn a lot doing it that way, but nothing beats a real human connection. LinkedIn now is exposed, as mentioned, to a lot of coaches, technical and technical, soft skills, life, career. And it really convinced me that the one thing, if you're going to put your time and your money somewhere to help you with a particular challenge or a goal, find yourself a coach, find yourself a mentor. Maybe you have a friend that's in this space that can do it as a favor or for fun. Maybe you know a leader in that space that you know is within your budget range that can help you with this. The experience and the growth that I have felt within that is really fulfilling. So for me, I do my best to go through life with the coach always.

Rexhen Doda:

Cool. I totally agree with that. And when you think about having coaches, like if you are telling, for example, your clients that they would need a coach, then it makes total sense that you also believe in coaching yourself. So it goes without saying. What would you say right now is a challenge that thinking also with your goals in mind, what is a challenge right now that you're trying to solve for next in the coaching business?

Aleksandar Cakic:

Like in the space or particularly for my business? For your business. So as mentioned, it's personal branding. I've already have a lot of people. I think right now it's a higher number than what we mentioned that this concept and the way we work as career coaches works. We have great results, especially when it comes to things like obtaining referrals with a higher return rate on that with things like networking and workshops. So we know this works. How do we tell our story? How do I convince someone to just hop in on a call with me and just share about their journey and the challenge that they're facing, you know, so that we can work together and I help them solve this. So personal branding is a very fun challenge that I have right now. And we're trying to, we're trying different things to see how to go about it, what makes sense.

Rexhen Doda:

Cool. Yeah, I feel like that is something that every coach initially has to overcome. I think getting it right will mean the difference for the next, let's say, five years or so until you would need to do a rebrand in the future again. Yeah, I think that that's going to be a very good thing to focus on. Right now, and we're getting to the final question, actually, thinking about coaches like yourself, what advice would you give to them when they're looking to scale their impact, just like you are? So it'd be like an advice you'd give to yourself.

Aleksandar Cakic:

One thing that I've noticed in this space, at least with me and a couple of other people who have career coaches, is that you have this fantastic work relationship for about three months, four months, six months, whatever. And then once the challenge has been completed, once all the milestones have been checked off, it just falls through. Maintain that connection. Connect with your clients more on a human level. Make the whole experience a little bit more relatable and a little bit more fun. One thing that really helps in terms of skill and getting your clients is not just offering free knowledge. As I mentioned, you don't want to spam the internet with knowledge that's already there. You want to give them a full experience for free. You want to make sure that whatever you're offering for free has a wow effect to the point where they're like, oh, if this was free, the experience, the workshop, the way they helped me with this and guided me through all of that, then like what else is out there with this person? So really connecting with your clients on the human level and maintaining that connection even after the coaching relationship might end. So what I tend to do is frequently I will reach out to past clients And some of them became close friends of mine. And I'm like, hey, how's it going? Where are you with this? Do you need any help with your current situation? And this is advice that it's just as a friend who has, at that point, I'm a friend who has a coaching experience. And this is advice that I give out freely. I have someone that I helped her break into tech and get a job. And three months in or four months in, I reached out and I'm like, How's the role? You know, how's the role? How's the team? Do you like everything? I'm like, oh, my God, this is amazing. And, you know, I'm doing this, this, this, this, this. But now this is an issue. And I'm like that you can solve it in this way and that way. And so it's just like having that conversation and keeping up with your clients and where they're on their journey really

Rexhen Doda:

helps. Thank you. Thank you so much, Alexander. And thank you for coming to our podcast. For anyone who wants to connect with you or reach out to you, they can go into LinkedIn, Alexander Sakic. They will be able to find you there. Apart from that, is there any other way that they could reach out to you?

Aleksandar Cakic:

Yeah, LinkedIn is a perfect way to do it. Anyone, feel free to send me a connection. I read, I do get a lot of messages, but I read and try to respond to all of them. I will also share additional ways on how people could reach out. There's going to be a website link and a couple more contact info.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you. Thank you so much,

Davis Nguyen:

Alexander. And thank you for coming to the show.

Aleksandar Cakic:

Thank you for having

Davis Nguyen:

me. That's it for this episode of Career Coaching Secrets. If you enjoyed this conversation, you can subscribe on YouTube Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to this episode to catch future episodes. This podcast was brought to you by Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to $100,000 years, $100,000 months, or even $100,000 weeks, all without burning out and making sure that you're making the impact and having the life that you want. To learn more about our community and how we can help you visit joinpurplecircle.com.