The Standard · People, HR and L&D
Mentoring
Mentors with AI-assisted resources and judgement about when advice must be human.
You prepare mentoring sessions, shape questions, track development, and turn conversations into useful plans and summaries. AI helps you extend preparation, but it can misread progress or replace judgement during difficult human moments.
The exam for Mentoring 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 Mentoring, 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 reply to anticipate a mentee’s questions, compare development options, and expose gaps in their support.
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 the mentee’s context, session purpose, source notes, and required mentoring format.
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 the reply into tailored questions, development plans, or progress summaries with your own mentoring judgement.
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 claims about the mentee’s progress against session notes, then correct unsupported patterns before sharing them.
Checking the assistant's claims, figures and assumptions against the source before the work is used.
- Safety and confidentiality
You keep personal mentee information out of the tool and output, and decline unsafe advice about the mentoring relationship.
Handling confidential and personal data, seeing compliance, ethical and reputational risk, and declining unsafe requests.
- Knowing what to delegate
You decide which mentoring preparation the assistant receives, which conversation decisions stay human, and who approves unresolved actions.
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 tailored question bank from a mentee’s goals, role context, and current mentoring challenge.
- 02
A development plan from session notes, agreed objectives, and the mentee’s next steps.
- 03
A progress summary from multiple mentoring records, highlighting patterns and follow-up actions.
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 mentoring. They briefed the assistant with mentee goals, caught a false pattern, and delivered a development plan.
You earn it in one exam, never by finishing a course.
- Name on the certificate
- Applied AI Badge: Mentoring
- Who it is for
- Mentors, career advisers, senior managers, and subject-matter experts.
- 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.
- Career Development
Plans career development with AI and tests its suggestions against real evidence.
- 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+ Mentoring covers this skill. No book is required to pass.