Question 1

What makes your coaching approach unique?

Accepted Answer

Our coaching approach combines your personal CliftonStrengths assessment with the Firework Career Change Framework, offering a strengths-based and proven methodology - that is then tailored to your specific career goals. This ensures a highly personalised and effective coaching experience. We're not guessing about your next career move it's based on who you are and a deep exploration of your values, motivations, skills, purpose and past success.

Question 2

What's a CliftonStrengths Assessment?

Accepted Answer

The CliftonStrengths Assessment, developed by Gallup founder Don Clifton, is a science-based tool that identifies your innate talents — the naturally recurring patterns of thought, feeling and behaviour you bring to everything you do. Through 177 questions, it reveals the rank order of 34 talent themes within you, giving you a clear roadmap for personal and professional growth. It's backed by decades of research. But a report alone isn't the finish line — turning your natural talents into real strengths takes practice and guidance, which is where working with a certified Strengths coach comes in.

Question 3

Do I need to buy my own CliftonStrengths assessment separately, or is it included?

Accepted Answer

Completing your CliftonStrengths Assessment is included in your Coaching. It's part of the Your Strengths Blueprint phase. Knowing your strengths forms part of your career compass, and eliminates guesswork — That's why we always start here first.

Question 4

What's the difference between Strengths Coaching and Career Coaching, which one do I  need?

Accepted Answer

It's not really an either/or choice. 
Strengths Coaching — Your Strengths Blueprint — is where every client starts.

It's Phase One of the journey: the CliftonStrengths assessment, coaching & and online learning helps you make sense of your results. With multiple 1:1 coaching sessions built in throughout, so nothing is left for you to interpret alone. 
By the end, you know your top talents, and exactly how to describe and use them — in interviews, on your resume, day to day at work.
The question, then, isn't which one to pick — it's whether you stop there or keep going.

Some clients only need Your Strengths Blueprint: they walk away with clarity and language for talents they'll take back into their current role or apply to their career change plans. 
Others arrive already knowing they need more than self-understanding — an actual next step, direction, or plan. For them, Career Coaching picks up exactly where the Blueprint leaves off, moving into Career Clarity and Career Catalyst to map real options and build the plan to get there.
So: everyone starts in the same place. The free chat is where we work out together whether the Blueprint is enough, or whether you're going to want to keep going.

Question 5

What  is the Firework Career Coaching Framework you use?

Accepted Answer

It's a carefully designed career-change framework with a 20-year, ICF-accredited track record, developed with leading career strategy coaches in the UK and Europe. The Inkling Effect is one of only 5 coaching providers in Australia licensed to coach with it — combined with Gallup strengths and executive coaching.

Question 6

How is Career Coaching different from the Career Crossroads workshop?

Accepted Answer

The workshop is a 90-minute online 'spark' — creating a big shift that gets you moving. A catalyst for you to take the first step towards career change.The Career Coaching program is the deep, personal version: 1:1 coaching plus online modules that take you all the way through self exploration, to a vision and an action plan. Many people start with the workshop and then commit to Career Coaching when they're ready to go further.

Question 7

Can I just do the Career Crossroads Workshop, or do I have to go on to Career Coaching?

Accepted Answer

You can just do the workshop. 
There's no obligation to continue on to coaching - the workshop is designed to stand on its own as a genuine 'spark' to get you moving with your carer change, not a taster session for something else.That said, 90 minutes is enough to shift your thinking and get you moving, not enough to work through everything. 
Some people leave with exactly what they needed — clarity, momentum, permission to stop sitting on the fence. 
Others realise there's more to unpack than one session can hold, and choose to go further with Career Coaching to keep moving forward. 
Either way is a good outcome — it's genuinely up to where you land after the workshop, not something decided for you going in.

Question 8

Do I have to commit to all three Coaching phases?

Accepted Answer

No. The framework is sequential, but flexible. The Your Strengths Blueprint Phase One is powerful enough to be completed on its own, we then shape your combination of phases around where you are and what you need. We'll talk all this through on a free chat first. Book a chat here

Question 9

I don't know what my next career move or goal is. Will that be a problem?

Accepted Answer

Not at all — that's exactly the starting point this is built for. 
Coaching is designed to help you gain clarity about your career aspirations and identify actionable steps to achieve them. 
You don't arrive with the answer; we uncover it together. The Your Strengths Blueprint phase gets you clear on who you are first, because you can't work out what you want next until you work out who you are and what you're great at.

Question 10

How do I know if career coaching is right for me?

Accepted Answer

If you feel stuck, uncertain, or ready for a change in your career, coaching can provide the clarity and direction you need. Our free initial Career Strategy Chat is a great way to explore whether coaching aligns with your needs.

Question 11

What industries do you specialise in for career coaching?

Accepted Answer

Your industry is not our first focus, you are.
Whilst we bring experience across a wide range of industries, including technology, start-ups, education, marketing & advertising, retail, hotel management & hospitality. Our approach is tailored to your unique background, strengths and aspirations, ensuring relevant and effective guidance.

Question 12

What age or career stage do you usually work with?

Accepted Answer

There's no single profile — clients have ranged from 20 to 60 years old. Recent university graduates finding their first internship, and 60-year-olds shaping a final career chapter before retiring. Mums returning to the workforce after having kids. People who've moved countries and found their hard-earned qualifications don't transfer.What they share isn't an age or stage — it's an 'inkling' that they are facing a change in their career and they need some guidance to navigate through it.
You'll find some examples of previous client situations on this page.

Question 13

How is this different from a career counsellor or recruiter?

Accepted Answer

A recruiter works for a company — their job is to fill a role, not to help you find the right one for you. A career counsellor often focuses on practical logistics: resumes, interview prep, job-search strategy.Our coaching starts a level deeper. Before any job search, we work out who you are — your values, strengths, and what you need to feel fulfilled — so any move you make afterwards is built on clarity, not guesswork, or the next available opening. It's coaching for the decision itself, not just the execution of a decision you've already made.

Question 14

Do you work with people outside Australia, in different timezones

Accepted Answer

Absolutely. We will determine together a suitable time that works for both parties during our free Chat before you commit. Book a Chat

Question 15

How do I start?

Accepted Answer

With a free, no-pressure Career Game Plan chat. We'll talk about where you're at, whether our coaching program is the right fit, and how the program would work for you — no obligation either way. Book a chat here.

Question 16

What is the typical duration of a coaching program?

Accepted Answer

The duration of a coaching program varies depending on your needs and goals. Typically, programs range from 3 weeks (Executive Coaching or Strengths Coaching) to 4 months (a sequence of Career Coaching Phases). During our initial consultation, we can determine the best timeline for you.

Question 17

Is there a payment plan, or does it need to be paid upfront?

Accepted Answer

Payment can be made upfront or broken into a maximum of 3 payments.

Question 18

What if I start and it turns out not to be the right fit?

Accepted Answer

That's exactly what the free chat is for — it happens before you start, not after. 
It's not a sales call. 
We spend that time properly defining your problem: what's actually going on for you, what "solved" would look like, and whether the coaching options on offer are genuinely the right tool for that. 
If they're not, we'll both recognise that.
The other aspect to being the 'right fit' is simpler — do we gel? 
Coaching is a personal thing, and you're going to be candid about your career, your doubts,  your fears. You need to feel like you're working with someone you actually want in your corner for that. We'll both know by the end of the chat whether that's there.So by the time you do commit, it's an informed yes on both counts — not a guess you're hoping pays off.

Question 19

Is everything I share with you confidential?

Accepted Answer

Yes. What you tell your coach stays between the two of you.You'll end up talking about parts of your career — and sometimes your life — that can feel genuinely vulnerable to say out loud: doubts about your ability, fears about starting again, things you might not have admitted to your manager, your partner, or even yourself yet. That kind of honesty is where the real progress happens, and it only works if you trust it won't go anywhere. It won't. Nothing you share in your coaching calls gets shared outside them.

Question 20

What results can I actually expect — how will I know it's worked?

Accepted Answer

You won't get a certificate or a scorecard. 
What you'll feel is different — clients describe it as things "changed into possibilities," a return of hope and confidence, and simply feeling like themselves again.

One client put it best: I didn't give her the answers — I created a space where she could "hear herself again."
Practically, that shows up in a few ways. 
You'll have language for what you're genuinely great at, instead of a vague sense of it. 
You'll feel less anxious about uncertainty and more curious about it — one client described trading the 'chase for certainty' for a real 'sense of excitement about what's next. '
And you'll have clarity where there was fog: about your values, your next move, or simply what you actually want, rather than what everyone else has defined for you.
It's not instant, and it's not the same for everyone — for some it's a full career pivot, for others it's rediscovering confidence in the role they're already in. 
The thread running through every client's experience is the same: you'll walk away knowing yourself, feeling confident and trusting yourself, in a way you didn't when you started.

FAQ's