Best AI Tools for Career Development

In today’s competitive and ever-changing job market, you may be wondering where to start when it comes to advancing your career. Using artificial intelligence (AI) tools can make your career development journey more productive and efficient. These high-tech tools can help with career development in many ways, from perfecting your resume and improving your job search to providing constructive interview prep. Learn more about the best AI tools for career development and where to find them.

What is career development?

Career development refers to the intentional, ongoing process of advancing your career. Generally, it involves:

• Building professional skills, experience, and networks

• Setting and meeting career goals

• Making productive career decisions

Top AI tools to boost your career

Advances in AI have improved life in many areas, and career development is no exception. Various AI-driven tools can help make your journey to a fulfilling career easier and more productive. Consider these examples:

AI-powered job portals

Many job search portals now offer quicker and more personalized job search capabilities with the power of generative AI (GenAI). Candidates provide their preferences and work skills, and they find job openings to match, which makes them more likely to apply for a position. When prospective employees are a better match for a position, the employer benefits by connecting with candidates with relevant skills and experience.

Examples of job portals that use GenAI include:

• CareerBuilder

• Glassdoor

• Indeed

• Lensa

• LinkedIn

• ZipRecruiter

AI tools for networking and building professional connections

A variety of networking tools use AI capabilities to help you build a robust network of professional contacts. When you provide information about your past work experiences, professional interests, and career goals, some AI-powered networking tools match you with like-minded individuals or groups you can meet virtually. Building these professional connections allows you to receive new ideas, information, and insights from peers and mentors.

Other AI networking tools allow you to optimize your professional social media profile and widen your circle by suggesting and sending connection requests and creating comments for posts.

Examples of AI-driven professional networking tools include:

• LinkedIn

• Lunchclub

• Meetup

AI resume editors

An AI resume editor assists with creating an effective resume. Users choose from various pre-made templates and fill in personal contact information, education, work experience, special skills, and awards or honors.

Capabilities provided by AI resume editing tools include:

• Job description analysis and recommendations for industry-related keywords 

• Complementary cover-letter builders with writing assistance

• Extra resources like guides for job searching, industry trends, and interview tips 

• Resume scoring to ensure you’ve covered essential information

• Option for feedback from a live agent

Examples of resume-editing tools using AI include:

• Resume Genius

• Resume.io

• Zety

AI interview preparation tools

Interview preparation tools driven by AI allow you to participate in a mock interview before you take part in a real one. You will answer job-specific interview questions; some platforms even offer follow-up questions for thorough interview practice. More benefits of these tools include:

• A chance to review your answers and body language with a live recording

• Recommendations for improving your answers

• An opportunity to practice at your own pace

Examples of interview prep AI tools include:

• Career.io Interview Prep

• Big Interview

• Google Interview Warmup

Emerging AI tools for career development

Certain emerging AI tools can help both employers and employees. Sites like Gloat and Eightfold use AI analysis to find skill gaps within companies and match them with current or prospective employees with these needed skills. This type of analysis also provides training areas to target for an efficient and productive workforce, improving worker morale by offering more opportunities for career advancement. 

Additional career development tools emerging and changing as a result of AI capabilities include:

• AI suggestions for generating mentor and mentee profiles for better matches, along with discussion suggestions

• Professional training programs customized to your exact needs

• More integration of AI into human resources (HR) departments for greater employee knowledge and productivity

• AI tools that offer expanded access to job opportunities around the world

Best practices: Considerations when using AI technology

When using AI, it’s essential to remember that it learns from and mimics the data it receives. A few best practices can help you have a successful and safe experience when using AI technology for your career development. 

1. Use AI to enhance your writing, not write for you. Write your resume independently and use AI for brainstorming and refinement to produce a resume that reflects your personal journey.

2. Protect your private information when using AI-driven tools. Because AI can use the data you provide for learning, you may want to refrain from sharing information like your name, address, email address, and phone number. 

3. Verify the results. Occasionally, AI uses old, biased, or inaccurate data for learning, which can skew the output you receive. Make sure to review and verify information before you use it.

Learn more about AI tools on Coursera.

Whether you’re just starting your career or looking for advancement opportunities, you can use AI tools to help with skill-building, resumes, networking, interviewing, and more.

On Coursera, AI can help you build skills to develop your career through:

• Customized learning: AI personalizes course recommendations based on your individual professional goals.

• Virtual learning coaches: AI provides answers to questions, quick lecture summaries, and personalized feedback to better understand learning topics.

• Language translation: AI translates courses taught in English to many other languages, with readings, assessments, quizzes, and instructions for more than 2,000 courses translated into languages including Arabic, French, German, Indonesian, Spanish, and more.

AI also assists Coursera course instructors with developing course structure and content. It helps instructors create and organize courses by suggesting recommended assignments, readings, and glossaries.

To learn more about AI and what you can do with it to advance your career, consider earning the IBM AI Developer Professional Certificate. You can build job-ready skills in AI technologies, generative AI models, and programming and learn to build AI-powered chatbots and apps in just 6 months.