Meet the PROS: Shanae Carlock
In celebration of Black History Month, we’re highlighting the achievements of our Black talent and changemakers across PROS. ✨
A mentor for young girls with a magic wand and creative eye to design powerful presentations, meet Shanae, Learning & Development Specialist II at PROS. When she’s not organizing and designing programs and materials to help people outperform, you’ll find her with family and friends, traveling or training for the Houston Half Marathon. Originally from Kansas City, MO, Shanae recently celebrated five years at PROS.
We sat down with Shanae to learn more about PROS new mentorship program, CareerCompass, a personal passion project that is now a formal program across PROS. She shares more about the importance of inclusion and mentorship, CareerCompass’s creation and taking ownership of your career at any stage.
Let’s get to know Shanae!
Tell us about your journey to PROS.
With a background in service and training in credit unions, tech wasn’t even on my radar. So when someone from PROS reached out to me, I did my research and discovered that PROS AI is behind some of the daily items we use. When I interviewed, the experience was unlike anything I had encountered before: one-on-one meetings not only with people from the team I would be working on but also with those I’d be collaborating with in the role. Getting to see the culture in person took it over the top. It was then that I realized this was the place for me and here I am more than five years later.
Share a project you’re proud of at PROS.
I recently had the opportunity to create a formal mentoring program at PROS and was given the creative freedom to build it from the ground up. With a personal passion for learning and career development, this was a project I was excited to bring to life.
I did a lot of research and spent a lot of time talking to people across the business to ensure we were creating an inclusive program that would bring value to everyone and empower individuals at every stage of their career journey to learn and grow from each other’s unique experiences.
When we looked at employee feedback from our weekly Employee Voice survey, we got a greater sense of employee sentiment around mentoring and saw career development as an opportunity for the organization. Employees wanted to grow their careers but didn’t know where to start or how to talk to their manager about a clear career path.
Taking all this in, I put together a support team with representation across departments, tenure and regions. We dove deep into the research and feedback to start building a framework for what a mentoring program at PROS would look like, and most importantly, a program that was sustainable and able to evolve to stand the test of time.
We then built CareerCompass, a mentoring program based on four foundational concepts that we believed would make a corporate mentorship program sustainable:
- Value – Mentors and mentees both have to get value from the relationship.
- Choice – There has to be some sense of choice, like I chose you to be my mentor/mentee.
- Flexibility – People need structure, but also need flexibility because we’re all busy.
- Ownership – People needed to take ownership, also one of PROS Values, of their career development.
I’m very proud of the team that came together to build this flexible framework and the collaborative process it took to get to where we are today.
What is something you learned about yourself while building this program?
I’m really good at sales! But everyone is good at sales when you’re selling something you are truly passionate about. It also felt good to empower people and help them see that no matter their level or tenure, they do bring value to any mentor relationship. Mentorship is very fluid and works both ways, and people often forget that. Outside of traditional mentorship, there’s reverse mentoring. So even though you might be new in your career or new to the industry, someone senior may want to be mentored by you because you have fresh ideas and can offer another unique perspective.
What do you enjoy most about working at PROS?
I enjoy the opportunities that PROS culture offers to work on passion projects. On our People & Culture team, we have lots of flexibility, and it comes easy in terms of the things I am passionate about – people and development. Having an awesome boss is also privilege and one of the reasons my experience working at PROS has been great. I get the support that I need, and he actively looks for ways for me to do more of the things I enjoy doing in my profession.
What are you a PRO at?
Keeping calm during a storm. The key is knowing that you are not in control and once I surrendered to that fact, life became a lot less stressful. If you ask our team, I am also a PRO at making things look pretty too.
What advice do you have for someone interested in joining the organization?
PROS is really a great place to work. The flexibility and culture here is unmatched. My advice to anyone starting out at PROS, or any new organization, is to get involved with a group that resonates with your values, whether it is an Employee Resource Group, or at PROS, our Wellbeing Innovation Team or any other group. It will give you an immediate opportunity to grow and grow your network.
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Learn more about PROS culture on our careers page and become a part of our growing team by applying to our open roles. Follow #LifeatPROS on LinkedIn and Instagram for more stories from the bright minds powering PROS around the globe.