Using AI & Career Support
Over the past year, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a companion for many. AI can write CVs, generate interview answers, summarise job descriptions, and offer advice in seconds. And when the average person touches their phone more than 2,600 times a day, it’s no surprise this incredible tool is used so frequently. But like anything convenient, immediate, and always within reach, it’s something we need to use with intention and moderation.
Why? Because AI can support your career, but it cannot fully understand you or your career. That difference matters.
I was recently coaching someone who kept experiencing the same outcome, job to job. They couldn’t pinpoint where things were going wrong. As our coaching work continued, an important pattern revealed itself. Initially however, there was no awareness of it. It took reflection, accountability, conversation, being asked the right questions, and being seen clearly by another human to identify what was actually happening. Coaching shines a light on blind spots. It increases self‑awareness, including awareness of how we may be limiting ourselves. And this is exactly where AI falls short. AI keeps you stuck in your stories, often reinforcing them. Coaching helps you move beyond your stories, your fears, your patterns. It helps you look at the other side and other options, whereas AI often simply agrees with you. It doesn’t call you out on your ‘stuff’; what’s blocking you actually moving forward. It might pull out a few weeds, but it won’t get to any roots and without this, limiting thoughts, decisions, and actions often moves alongside us, from job to job.
AI relies entirely on the information you feed it, including any bias and your ‘side of the story’. It responds only to what you share. It can’t sense the things you’re not saying. It doesn’t pick up on hesitation, fear, or the subtle change in your voice or body language when you starting discussing something that drains you. AI struggles with nuance, and nuance is often where the very thing blocking you, sits.
Because of this, AI tends to reinforce the path you’re already on. If you’re unclear, stuck, or underselling yourself, AI simply mirrors that back. If you say, “I’m in marketing, what roles should I look at?” it will give you marketing roles. It won’t ask whether you’re fulfilled. People often turn to AI because they are unsure about their strengths, passions, direction, or their next step. But if you don’t know these, AI won’t either. AI doesn’t know your potential, the unspoken stresses and it cannot sense your full capability when you’re supported, encouraged, and seen. Human connection helps uplift your confidence, not AI. Its hard to believe something that hasn’t come close (and never will) to experiencing your experience.
Career decisions are rarely simple. They involve competing priorities: financial pressure, identity, family needs, wellbeing, ambition, fear, timing, opportunity, and the realities of the job market. AI can list pros and cons, but it can’t help you navigate the emotional weight of those decisions. It can’t help you hold two truths at once.
So what’s the role of AI in career support? AI is an extremely useful and time saving tool, but essentially it won’t help you access deep wisdom nor understand what’s truly keeping you stuck or what will bring you fulfillment. It can help you gather information, generate ideas, draft documents, and explore possibilities. But it cannot replace the depth, clarity, and transformation that comes from human discussion, or the truth that emerges when you slow down, pay attention to what’s real for you right now, and make decisions that genuinely meet your life and the job market as they are today.