5 AI Prompts to Use in Career Coaching
“What should I do with my life? What career path will make me happiest? Tell me what jobs in my city earn a lot of money.”
People are increasingly turning to AI for answers to questions like these. And career development professionals are exploring how to use the technology in their own practice, too. In November 2025, the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) reported that 76% of surveyed college career centers used AI as an assistive tool when working with individual students, compared with approximately 20% in spring 2023. Read the NACE findings.
But AI is not a Magic Eight Ball. It cannot determine someone's ideal career or make meaningful career decisions on their behalf. Its value lies in helping people ask better questions, consider new possibilities, and take informed action.
For career coaches, AI can be a useful assistant for generating coaching questions, developing activities, and helping individuals move from reflection to action. The key is using it intentionally, with the coach's professional judgment and the client's own perspective at the center.
Following the career planning process of Discover, Explore, Plan, and Prepare, here are five prompts you can adapt for your next career coaching conversation.
DISCOVER: Facilitate Self-Awareness in Career Advising Sessions
When to use it: When an individual is struggling to identify what they want from work or articulate their interests, strengths, and values.
Try this AI prompt:
“Generate five open-ended questions to help an individual explore their interests, strengths, work values, and fulfilling experiences. Suggest themes to explore without recommending a career.”
How to use it
Self-awareness is an important foundation for career decision-making, but individuals don't always know where to begin. They may focus on what they dislike about their current job without knowing what they want instead, or struggle to identify the strengths and interests they could bring to a new role.
AI can help you generate fresh questions and approaches to facilitate reflection. Use the questions as a starting point, selecting those that best fit an individual's needs rather than following the list mechanically.
Encourage individuals to draw on specific examples from their work, education, and life experiences. Concrete examples can reveal patterns that abstract questions alone might miss.
Career coach reflection: Which questions prompted the richest discussion? What patterns emerged? Does the individual recognize themselves in the themes you identified together?
Remember that AI-generated interpretations are hypotheses, not conclusions. Your role is to help individuals develop their own understanding of what matters to them.
EXPLORE: Broaden Career Possibilities
When to use it: When an individual feels stuck, has limited awareness of career options, or struggles to see how their existing skills and interests might translate into different roles.
Try this AI prompt:
“Suggest five career paths that align with this individual's interests, strengths, and values, including options they may not have considered. Explain why each is worth exploring.”
How to use it
Individuals often consider only occupations they already know or roles that resemble their current work. AI can help broaden the conversation by generating possibilities across different occupations and industries.
For example, someone who enjoys research, writing, and understanding people might initially consider only traditional communications roles. An AI-generated list could introduce adjacent possibilities in user research, learning and development, or market research.
The point isn't to find the perfect job title. It's to help individuals recognize that their interests and skills may translate into more options than they initially imagined.
Career coach reflection: Which possibilities spark the individual's curiosity? Is there an option they hadn't considered? Which suggestions don't resonate, and why?
An individual's reaction to an option can be just as informative as the suggestion itself. Help them narrow the possibilities according to their priorities, rather than simply choosing the careers AI presents most confidently.
3. EXPLORE: Investigate Career Paths
When to use it: When an individual has identified potential career directions and needs to understand what those careers actually involve.
Try this AI prompt:
“Create an activity to help an individual compare potential career paths based on responsibilities, required skills, work environment, earning potential, and entry routes. Include reliable research sources and questions for informational interviews.”
How to use it
Generating career possibilities is only the beginning. Individuals also need to understand the realities of different occupations. What does the day-to-day work involve? What qualifications are required? What are the potential challenges, and how does the work align with their priorities?
AI can help organize a comparison activity and identify questions for further investigation. However, career information, salary estimates, and job market projections should be verified against reliable sources.
One solution for self-discovery is GoZig, an open platform empowering individuals to take assessments and review recommended career pathways and next steps to take.
Encourage individuals to go beyond online research when possible. Informational interviews and conversations with professionals can provide firsthand insights into a career's realities.
Career coach reflection: What criteria matter most to the individual? Are they evaluating options against their own priorities or someone else's expectations? What additional information would help them make an informed decision?
4. PLAN: Turn a Career Goal into Action
When to use it: When an individual has identified a direction they want to pursue but feels overwhelmed by the steps involved.
Try this AI prompt:
“Help me develop a realistic 90-day action plan with this individual to work toward their career goal. Include milestones, manageable steps, and potential barriers.”
How to use it
Career exploration can generate exciting possibilities, but individuals also need a way to move forward. AI can help break a broad aspiration into manageable actions, whether the client needs to research training options, build new skills, connect with professionals, or explore opportunities within their current organization.
A 90-day plan can provide structure without requiring the individual to have every answer upfront. It creates opportunities to learn, evaluate progress, and adjust their direction as new information emerges.
Review the proposed plan with your individual before adopting it. A detailed plan is not necessarily a realistic one, and the right next step depends on the client's circumstances, available resources, and readiness.
Career coach reflection: Does the plan reflect the individual's actual capacity and priorities? Which step feels achievable this week? What support or accountability might help them follow through?
Remind individuals that a plan is a working document, not a contract. Adapting it as circumstances change is part of effective career development.
5. PREPARE: Help Communicate Skills
When to use it: When someone is preparing an application, interview, or career conversation and needs to articulate how their experience relates to an opportunity.
Try this AI prompt:
“Help an individual identify transferable skills that align with a job they're interested in. Generate questions to help them develop specific examples for an application or interview, without inventing achievements.”
How to use it
People don't always recognize how their existing experience translates to a new role. This can be particularly challenging for career changers, people returning to work, or those moving between industries.
AI can help identify potential connections between experience and an employer's stated requirements. You can then use these connections to guide a conversation about evidence.
Ask the individual to describe specific situations, the actions they took, and the results they achieved. This helps them move beyond generic claims about their abilities and communicate their value with confidence.
Career coach reflection: Can the indidivual substantiate the skills identified with real examples? Are they overlooking relevant experience? Does their explanation sound authentic and accurately represent their achievements?
AI can help organize and articulate their value, but it should never invent accomplishments or replace their own voice.
Using AI to strengthen career coaching
These five prompts demonstrate how AI can support different stages of career planning, from self-awareness and exploration to goal-setting and preparation. They also illustrate an important principle: AI is most useful when it strengthens the coaching process rather than attempting to replace it.
Career coaches bring professional judgment, empathy, cultural awareness, and an understanding of the context behind someone's decisions. AI can generate questions, organize information, and suggest activities, but it cannot reliably determine what matters most to an individual or decide which career direction is right for them.
Responsible use matters, too. Protect confidentiality, avoid entering personally identifying or sensitive information into AI tools without appropriate safeguards, and verify AI-generated information rather than accepting it at face value. Be mindful that AI outputs can reflect biases or make inaccurate claims, particularly about occupations and qualifications
Ultimately, AI doesn't need to replace the human elements of career development to be valuable. Used intentionally, it can help coaches bring fresh perspectives into conversations, explore possibilities with greater structure, and support individuals in taking meaningful action.
The goal isn't to find an answer from a machine. It's to help people develop the self-awareness, confidence, and agency to shape their own working lives. Ready to learn more? Reach out to our team for additional guidance!
