The Standard · People, HR and L&D
Career Development
Plans career development with AI and tests its suggestions against real evidence.
You plan a career move, strengthen applications, prepare for interviews, or build evidence for a transition. You ask an AI assistant to compare roles, shape your experience, and organise next steps. You can be misled by invented requirements, inflated achievements, or advice that ignores evidence.
The exam for Career Development is not open yet. A skill opens once its questions are approved and tested.
What it measures
Whatever the skill, the exam rates your work in the same six areas of the Standard. Three are for the value you get from the assistant, and three for the control you keep. Each area gets one of 4 ratings (Emerging, Developing, Proficient, Accomplished). For Career Development, a strong performance looks like this. What each area includes and excludes.
Value
What you get from the assistant: how far it takes the work, how well you brief it, and the piece you hand in.
- Reaching further
You use the assistant to uncover overlooked career options, evidence gaps, and role requirements your development plan must address.
Using the assistant to produce work beyond what you could have produced alone, rather than the same work faster.
- Briefing the assistant
You brief the assistant with target role, career evidence, constraints, audience, and required format for a practical development plan.
Giving the assistant the reader, purpose and source facts the work depends on, and the form, length and contents you need back.
- The finished piece
You turn suggestions into an evidence-based career plan, tailored application materials, and clear next steps for the candidate.
Turning the assistant's output into something a colleague could use: editing it, combining it and adding original thinking.
Control
What you keep in hand: checking its work, keeping information safe, and deciding what stays with a person.
- Checking its work
You check career claims, role requirements, and advice against reliable sources and the candidate’s documented experience.
Checking the assistant's claims, figures and assumptions against the source before the work is used.
- Safety and confidentiality
You keep confidential employment history, salary details, and portfolio evidence out of prompts and public-facing materials.
Handling confidential and personal data, seeing compliance, ethical and reputational risk, and declining unsafe requests.
- Knowing what to delegate
You decide which career judgements remain yours, which drafting tasks go to the assistant, and who approves consequential choices.
Deciding what to hand to the assistant and what to keep, and at what stakes, before any output exists.
What you do in the exam
Every skill of the Standard is examined the same way, at the same pass mark, in the Applied AI Badge. Two tasks with the assistant and two sets of questions, over 15 minutes. You do real work with an AI assistant beside you, hand in what you would send, then answer follow-up questions about your own work.
- 01
A career development plan from career evidence and target-role requirements.
- 02
A tailored CV and cover letter from verified experience and a role description.
- 03
An interview preparation pack from competency requirements, evidence, and likely follow-up questions.
These are the kinds of task the exam sets. Your exam draws its own from a bank the Examination Board has approved.
- Exam
- Applied AI Badge
- Price
- US$19
- Length
- 15 minutes
- Attempts
- One for each purchase, then a 7-day wait
What the badge certifies
What an employer reads
Passed an Institute exam in career development. They briefed the assistant with verified experience and target-role requirements, caught false claims, and delivered tailored application materials.
You earn it in one exam, never by finishing a course.
- Name on the certificate
- Applied AI Badge: Career Development
- Who it is for
- Career coaches, recruiters, people professionals, and professionals planning a career move.
- Valid for
- 2 years, then renew
- Verification
- Every badge has a public verification page an employer can open, and a place in the public register if you choose it.
- Marked by
- An AI examiner marks your work against a marking guide and quotes your own words as evidence. A person checks anything borderline.
Near it in the Standard
- Lesson Planning
Plans lessons with AI, aligned to objectives and checked for accuracy and level.
- Assessment Design
Designs assessments with AI and validates that they measure what they claim.
- Instructional Design
Designs learning experiences with AI and keeps pedagogy, not the tool, in the lead.
- Online Course Creation
Builds online courses with AI-generated material that is verified before learners see it.
- Coaching
Coaches with AI as preparation and reflection, never as a substitute for the conversation.
- Mentoring
Mentors with AI-assisted resources and judgement about when advice must be human.
- People Management
Manages people with AI-assisted planning and communication while keeping decisions and fairness human.
- Feedback & Performance
Gives feedback and runs performance conversations with AI preparation and human accountability.
Everything in People, HR and L&D, including the level exams that name the whole function.
Practise it before you pay for it
Practice is free (up to 50 sessions a day) and shaped like the exam, with a coach that tells you what to change. It never counts towards a credential, and an exercise you practised is kept out of your exam.
Want to learn it first? AI+ Career Development covers this skill. No book is required to pass.