‘You are my business coach’: More workers use AI for career advice

When communications worker Suzanne Selkow decided to open her own consulting practice, she realized that going solo meant fewer opportunities to “turn to a colleague for a gut check,” she says. Knowing herself to get bogged down in “decision paralysis,” she figured she needed some kind of outside perspective as she launched her business. So she turned to a different kind of mentor—she created an AI career coach using Anthropic’s Claude. “I figured that was actually a practical use case for an LLM—to be able to take some of those bigger-picture ideas that I had workshopped with a human coach, and turn it into a week-by-week [business] plan,” she says. Now months into her solo career, Selkow, 36, says she still turns to her AI career coach for certain mentorship-style tasks, like direction for what tone to use with clients. More and more people seem to be relying on artificial intelligence as an effective career coach. Per 2025 research from business-focused think tank The Conference Board, 96% of workers felt AI was able to give them “customized” coaching, while 91% who had used AI for career coaching said they would use it again. Senior employees, too, are noticing its prevalence across younger workers. “Junior folks are using AI for career questions very often; I’d say every day,” says Jasmine Singh, general counsel at the legal tech company Ironclad. “Whether they would have turned to more senior folks for those questions or not . . . is the debatable part.” With so many job-focused worries around AI replacing humans, it’s a bit startling to see the technology being used for mentorship—a uniquely human activity that relies on interpersonal connection for professional growth. But even as more workers look to AI for professional advice, they insist the technology’s role is supplemental to their interactions with human mentors. The AI, according to those who use it, simply helps to fill in gaps that humans wouldn’t want to be bothered with, anyway. “You a