What's the secret to pan-searing a steak with regard to oil's smoking point?
If your oil catches fire, it is indeed too hot. But still, you cannot make a good steak without reaching the smoking point. 

"the temperature definitely isn't anything to write home about" - here you are wrong. Whether the tempreature is too much, too little, or just right, that's something you recognize by the behavior of your food. If your oil billows large smoke clouds and your steak chars on the outside, that's way too much, no matter now easy it was to reach it or how little you have turned the dial. 

Just keep adjusting the temperature until your steak cooks well. From what you are writing, the first adjustment should be down, but before you learn, you will probably at some time start undershooting it and will have to regulate it back up. Just repeat the exercise until you get a good feeling for how to make the steak. You can speed up the learning process if you start using an infrared thermometer.