Skip to main content

AI in career planning

📖 Lesson content

What you'll learn

By the end of this lesson you'll be able to:

  • Use AI thoughtfully for career exploration, skill building, job searching and job application support
  • Create authentic application materials with AI support while maintaining your unique voice
  • Practice interview skills with AI as your coach
  • Build a strategic approach to career development that leverages AI appropriately

AI as a learning partner

This video explores how to use AI as a thinking partner for career planning rather than a machine that makes decisions or creates generic content for you. It covers three main areas: career mapping (where AI provides information while you provide self-knowledge and values), skill building (where AI acts as a coach for developing specific capabilities), and job searching (where AI helps with research and practice while you maintain authenticity). The video emphasizes that employers can immediately recognize generic AI-generated application materials, and that AI Fluency itself is becoming a valuable career skill worth highlighting. Throughout, the focus is on using AI to enhance your career planning while ensuring all representations of yourself remain authentic.

Key takeaways

  • Career planning combines AI's information gathering with your self-knowledge and values
  • Generic AI-generated resumes and cover letters are easily spotted and ineffective
  • AI excels at research, brainstorming, and practice but you must drive the strategy
  • Skill building with AI requires specific goals and active practice, not passive consumption
  • AI Fluency is itself a valuable career skill to develop and showcase

Exercises

This comprehensive exercise takes you through a complete career development process using AI strategically at each stage. The timing is just a guideline - don't feel like you need to rush anything!

Part 1: Career exploration & self-discovery (15 minutes)

Start a conversation with Claude (or an AI of your choice) about career exploration:

Setting up the conversation:

  • Share your academic background (or reuse your document from lesson 1) and any work experience
  • Explain you're exploring career options and want AI to help you research and reflect
  • Emphasize you want to discover what's right for you, not have AI decide

Information gathering with AI:

Ask the AI to help you research:

  • What careers use skills similar to your major but in different ways
  • Emerging roles in your field of interest over the next 5-10 years
  • Real salary progressions and job market demand in your target locations
  • Day-to-day realities of roles you're considering
  • Multiple paths people have taken to reach positions you find interesting

Self-reflection with AI guidance:

Have the AI ask you questions to explore:

  • What energizes you versus drains you in your current activities
  • What trade-offs you're willing to make (salary vs. flexibility, stability vs. growth)
  • Your values and how different careers might align with them
  • Your definition of success beyond just job titles
  • What skills you genuinely enjoy using versus just happen to have

Creating your career map:

  • Ask the AI to summarize potential paths based on your discussion
  • Identify 2-3 roles that genuinely interest you
  • Note skill gaps between where you are and where you want to be
  • Save this exploration for reference

Part 2: CV/resume improvement workflow (15 minutes)

Now practice this systematic CV/resume improvement workflow:

Step 1: Initial CV/resume Critique (5 minutes) In a new conversation (or clearly separated section):

  • Share your current CV/resume/resume

  • Provide a specific job spec (either an opportunity you are currently targeting or one representative of your general target)

  • Ask the AI to

  • Analyze the job spec: What skills, experiences, etc are they looking for? Given the general role, are there other criteria that are not mentioned but are relevant.

  • Analyze your CV/resume in the context of this particular job spec

  • Provide a specific to-do list of improvements for you to consider. Get the AI to focus on what's missing, what's unclear, and what doesn't align with the role.

  • Discuss these analyses and to-do list to make sure you understand them all - YOU are applying for this job, not the AI

Step 2: Information Gathering (5 minutes)

  • Ask the AI to gather information from you - whatever it needs to know to help you address each point on the to-do list. Get the AI to help you remember and unpack relevant experiences and achievements.
  • Answer the AI's questions honestly and with specific examples and details
  • Work with the AI to articulate your experiences more effectively

Step 3: CV/resume Revision (5 minutes)

  • Now, based on the information gathered, work with the AI to address specific to-do items and revise specific sections of your CV/resume
  • Focus on incorporating your actual experiences in stronger language
  • Ensure every point can be backed up with real examples
  • Remember: this is YOUR experience, just better articulated
  • Create a final version of the CV/Resume that feels authentic to you

Part 3: Interview Preparation (15 minutes)

Mock interview setup:

  • Start a fresh conversation for interview practice:

  • Share your revised CV/resume and the job description

  • Ask the AI to analyze the role and think about 5 common and realistic interview questions.

  • Then get the AI to ask you these questions, referencing details from your CV/resume when appropriate.

  • Important: Specify you want the AI to:

  • ask only one question at a time, and to wait for an answer

  • ask at most one follow up question if needed and wait for an answer

  • Then to move on to the next question

  • Answer each question as if in a real interview

  • Try to include specific examples from your experience

  • Bonus: practice explaining any AI-assisted projects honestly - flex your AI Fluency

  • Focus on demonstrating understanding, not just reciting prepared answers

  • At the end, ask the AI to critique each of your answers in terms of content, clarity, style and relevance

Shake it up: You can easily adapt this workflow to prepare cover letters and other communications (not just your CV/resume)

Key things to keep in mind:

  • The AI is helping you practice and prepare, but in the actual interview, you need to be genuinely present and authentic.
  • Don't try to memorize scripts. Try to understand your experiences well enough to discuss them naturally and flexibly no matter what the question is about.
  • Employers want to hire YOU, not an AI's version (or anyone else's version) of you

What's next

In our final lesson, we'll explore what it means to be "the human in the loop." You'll create a personal AI collaboration policy that reflects your values, develop guidelines for responsible AI use, and build a framework for continued growth in AI fluency that will serve you throughout your academic and professional journey.

Feedback

As you progress through the course, we'd love to hear from you about how you are using concepts from the course in your life, work, or classes and any feedback you may have. Share your feedback here.

Acknowledgements

Copyright 2025 Rick Dakan, Joseph Feller, and Anthropic. Released under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. This course is based on The AI Fluency Framework by Dakan and Feller.Supported in part by the Higher Education Authority, Ireland, through the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning.

Summary

Downloads

🎬 Video transcript

Source video: XFVBp3eQnuQ

📜 Click to expand transcript (cleaned + AI-translated)

AI as a Thinking Partner in Career Planning

Career planning—figuring out what you want to do, the skills you need to do it, and how to land that dream role—is overwhelming for just about everybody. In this guide, we'll talk about how AI can support you in each of these tasks, but not in the way you might think.

Instead of just cranking out resumes or cover letters that recruiters can immediately tell are generic AI content, we're going to walk you through using AI to help you identify roles that suit you, the skills you need to get them, and the strategies to land opportunities in ways that feel authentically you.

You've probably seen advice about using AI to optimize resumes or write cover letters. Unfortunately, these tips are often applied without fluency, and the end results are generic, forced, and don't impress employers. When you use AI thoughtfully in your career-building process, it can support both your immediate job search and your long-term career success. The key is to engage with AI as a thinking partner that helps you develop your own career strategy, not as a service that makes decisions or content for you.

Instead of looking at the 4Ds individually, let's walk through the actual process of career planning with AI, from mapping your career goals and building skills to landing your dream role.

Career Exploration: Information vs. Reflection

So you've likely been asked something along the lines of, "What do you want to do with your life?" No pressure, right? This is exactly the kind of question we don't want to hand over to AI completely, but that doesn't mean you can't lean on AI to help you think this through.

AI fluency means knowing that AI can help you with things like brainstorming potential career paths you hadn't considered, or connecting dots between your background and your dream role that you might miss on your own. But it also means recognizing there are many times when you shouldn't engage with AI at all—times when you need to trust your own expertise instead.

Career exploration has two important parts: gathering information about the workforce and a lot of personal reflection. AI is fantastic at the information part. It can tell you what's out there, what skills companies are actually looking for, and how entire industries are shifting. It can also conduct broad research that saves you a lot of time.

But of course, only you know what energizes you, what trade-offs you'll accept, what aligns with your values, and what kind of life you want to build. The most effective approach pairs your own self-knowledge and gut instincts with AI to find, understand, and analyze a ton of information together.

Practical AI Applications in Career Exploration

Here are some ways you might put AI to work in your career exploration:

  • Industry Research and Trend Analysis: For example, you can ask AI to conduct research that answers the question: "What are the emerging roles in sustainable tech that combine environmental science with data analysis?"
  • Skill-Gap Identification for Target Roles: For example: "I want to be a UX designer. What specific skills do employers actually look for versus what boot camps teach?"
  • Salary and Job Market Insights: Especially with AI systems that can search and synthesize from across the web. For example: "What's the real salary progression for entry-level consultants in different cities?"
  • Typical Trajectories and Timelines: Such as: "Show me different ways people have transitioned from teaching to corporate training roles."
  • Brainstorming Roles: For example: "What careers use similar skills to journalism but have better job stability?"
  • Self-Reflection Coaching: Finally, get AI to ask you questions to draw out your own career goals and values. Often we haven't made these explicit even to ourselves.

Skill Development with AI Coaching

After all this exploration, let's say you actually find that there's a gap between where you are and where you want to end up. That's where skill development with AI comes in.

Using AI for skill development is in many ways similar to using it as a learning partner. The trick is being specific about what you're trying to learn and getting AI to actually coach you through the process, not just dump information on you. Smart skill development with AI starts with being honest about where you're at right now and exactly what you need to accomplish.

Strategies for Effective Skill Building

  • Be Specific About Your Learning Needs: Instead of "Help me learn data analysis," try: "I'm applying for marketing roles and need to analyze customer survey data for a take-home interview and I don't know where to start. I think I should start with the basics of Excel pivot tables, but I'm not sure. Please help me figure out a plan, including opportunities to practice."
  • Collaborate with AI as a Coach: You can try getting it to create practice scenarios from your target industry or asking for feedback on your work examples.
  • Role-Play Scenarios: Have it role-play situations you'll face, such as pretending to be an interviewer from a specific team and challenging you with practice questions and feedback.
  • Check-in with Yourself Regularly: Are you actually learning or just going through the motions? If you don't think you're growing and improving, try working with AI differently.

Landing the Role: Authenticity and Strategy

Once you've got your skills moving in the right direction, it's time for the big challenge: actually landing the job. Job searching involves many tasks: researching companies and roles, crafting application materials that authentically represent your experience, and preparing compelling stories that will make interviewers remember you.

The 4D framework can help guide each task to ensure you're showing up as your best self. Here's a good rule of thumb: AI can handle the brainstorming and coaching, helping you practice and giving general feedback. It can even write drafts that you take bits and pieces from to form your final set of application materials. But ultimately, you're responsible for presenting you.

Maximizing Your Application with AI

  • Identify Transferable Skills: Let AI help you bridge the gap between your past experience and new roles.
  • Interview Preparation: Engage with AI to practice answering tough interview questions.
  • Unique Angles: Have it help you find unique angles for cover letters based on company research.

Remember, your professional expertise and career goals should drive your AI collaboration process. AI doesn't know what fulfills you or what trade-offs you're willing to make. As you work with AI, evaluate its suggestions against your authentic professional identity. Whether it's a job application, resume, cover letter, or even a social media post, you ultimately take responsibility for how you represent yourself professionally. AI may be able to help you tell your story better, but it starts and ends with your expertise.

AI Fluency as a Competitive Advantage

One last thing: fluent AI use includes keeping track of your AI interactions and being upfront about AI assistance when it makes sense to mention it. Don't shy away from that.

AI fluency itself is becoming a valuable career skill. Employers want people who can work with AI effectively, which is exactly what you're learning and practicing here. By working to build your AI fluency, you're going beyond just a job search to developing skills that will matter across your future career. Add that to your resume.

🔁 Related lessons

📚 Source & attribution

Was this lesson helpful?

Feedback / ReportSpotted an issue or have an improvement idea?