AI can help you review your CV, explore potential roles, and identify skills to develop. For someone trying to make their next career move, that support can be useful, especially when access to professional guidance is limited and, most of the times, costly.
Career decisions also involve questions that require personal reflection. What do you want from work? Which compromises can you afford to make? What would make a new role worth leaving your current one?
A 2024 review by Shyamal S. Pandya and Jia Wang examined 101 journal publications on AI and career development. Its central finding is this: AI can expand access to career support while also creating uncertainty about people’s professional futures.
Understanding both sides can help us use these tools more thoughtfully.
How AI Can Support Your Career
AI can make career support more accessible. The review describes applications such as automated CV feedback, career chatbots, job recommendations, and personalized learning programs. These tools can help people identify gaps, explore possibilities, and receive feedback without waiting for an appointment.
For employers, AI can speed up recruitment and help organize employee development. For individuals, it can provide a useful starting point when the next step feels unclear.
Someone considering a career change, for example, could use AI to organize their existing experience, compare it with the requirements in job advertisements, and draft a learning plan. Those suggestions can then be checked against actual opportunities and discussed with people who understand the field.
Job Insecurity and the Limits of AI Advice
The same technology can also create anxiety. The review discusses research linking concerns about AI replacement with job insecurity, burnout, and intentions to leave an organization. A tool introduced to improve efficiency may leave employees wondering whether they still have a future there.
That uncertainty can make career planning feel urgent. It can also make an immediate, confident answer from an AI tool especially appealing. Yet a confident recommendation still needs to be examined.
The authors warn about accepting automated advice even when it conflicts with personal knowledge or experience. They also highlight algorithmic bias. A recruitment system can process applications quickly while still unfairly excluding candidates. A career recommendation can sound convincing while relying on incomplete information about the person receiving it.
Five Ways to Use AI for Career Planning
For anyone using AI to plan their next move, these concerns suggest a few practical habits.
- Start with a specific question. Give the tool a task you can evaluate, such as comparing your CV with a job description or suggesting ways to demonstrate a particular skill. Include relevant constraints, such as your experience, location, and available learning time.
- Check recommendations against real opportunities. Compare suggested skills and qualifications with several relevant job advertisements. Speak with people doing the work. Treat an AI-generated career path as a possibility to investigate before committing time or money.
- Keep your experience accurate. Use AI to clarify your achievements and make your writing easier to understand. Check every statement before using it in an application. You should be able to explain and support every claim in your CV.
- Give learning a practical purpose. If you identify a skill gap, choose an activity that lets you practice the skill and assess your progress. Ask AI to help structure the learning, then apply what you learn to a relevant task or project.
- Be selective about the information you share. Career documents can contain personal details and confidential information about employers or clients. Remove unnecessary identifiers and check how a tool handles uploaded material before sharing it.
Building a Career That Fits Your Life
These habits leave room for the part of career development that deserves more attention: deciding what a good working life means to you.
A role might match your skills and still demand hours that do not fit your family responsibilities. A promotion might increase your income while moving you away from the work you enjoy. A career change might be attractive but require preparation you need to spread over several months.
Those circumstances belong in the decision. So do your interests, responsibilities, energy, and ambitions.
Why Human Guidance Still Matters
The review emphasizes the value of human guidance, including dialogue, shared experience, and an understanding of changing aspirations. A useful career conversation gives you space to examine assumptions, explain what matters, and work through competing priorities.
At Loor Lemon, we believe career development should help people make informed decisions about their work and their lives. AI can contribute useful information and structure to that process. Your own judgment and circumstances should guide how you use it.
Research note: The review covers publications from 2018 to 2022, largely before the widespread adoption of today’s generative AI tools. It maps the existing research rather than assessing the quality of every included study. The practical suggestions above are our recommendations informed by the review.
Main Reference: Pandya, S. S., & Wang, J. (2024). Artificial intelligence in career development: a scoping review. Human Resource Development International. Read the article.
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