Nobody chose the AI that is already in your practice

A client arrives with a resume they did not write, or a confident answer about a labour market that is clearly wrong. You ask where it came from and get a shrug, or the name of a chatbot.

Many career development professionals across the country can describe some version of that appointment. Nobody in the profession voted for it. It arrived anyway, on both sides of the desk, well ahead of the training and the guidelines that should have come with it.

Adoption Has Outpaced Preparation

The adoption of AI within career development has been swift, whether professionals are prepared for it or not. Adoption is clearly outpacing readiness. But how far ahead is it? A national study published this June by the Canadian Career Development Foundation, with Magnet at Toronto Metropolitan University, surveyed 370 practitioners and found that 84% already use AI in their work with clients, while 82% have had no formal AI training. Nearly half say they are uncomfortable using AI. They use it anyway, because the alternative is falling behind clients who are already using and becoming versed in AI tools.

That is only the visible half. No figure shows how many of your clients use it on their own, and no record shows what a chatbot told someone at eleven o’clock at night when they asked whether they should leave their job.

The Oversight Nobody Can Give You

Better software will not solve that. No tool will hand you a transcript of your client’s private conversations, and anyone promising that kind of oversight is selling you something.

So the leverage sits elsewhere, and the same study from the Canadian Career Development Foundation suggests the profession already knows where. Only 1% of practitioners fully trust AI to assess a client’s needs, and 86% want clear guidelines for its use. That is not a profession resisting technology. It is a profession asking to set the terms, and not being heard.

Setting terms starts with naming what does not move: identity work, values clarification, sitting with someone in crisis, and the moment a person decides. Those are not tasks waiting to be reassigned to AI. They are the practice.

Everything else is worth a hard question. Does this tool build a client’s capability, or quietly stand in for it? Does it know where to stop when someone presents in distress? Has anyone independently evaluated it? When assessing how to utilize AI within your practice, the focus needs to be on how it’s creating long-term benefits like cutting time lost to administrative work and helping bridge the gap between sessions.

Ask This One Question, Starting Today

Take an easy step on your own to understand how AI is affecting your practice. Ask. Put one question into your intake and check-in forms: ‘What have you already asked AI about this, and what did it tell you?’

Almost everyone answers. Most people have simply never been asked. The record you were told does not exist is sitting across the desk from you.

Information was never scarce in this work, and it certainly isn’t now. What a client cannot get at eleven o’clock at night is someone who can say which part of a suggestion is worth acting on, which part is wrong for them specifically, and what they never thought to ask. That is judgment, and it does not automate.

So the question is not whether AI belongs in career development. It is whether this profession is handed its tools, or sets the standard those tools have to meet. You are the only ones who can say what that standard should be.

– By Drew Lindsay, Co-Founder and CEO, PathPilot –

 Image generated using ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI.