|
2 new AI tools to help super-charge your clients' job search
Editorial by Christian Saint Cyr
National Director / Canadian Job Development Network
.
Every day we see new articles about how employers are using AI to sort, rank, interview and evaluate potential job candidates, sometimes before humans even get involved. Speed and automation now help dictate who gets a foot in the door.
.
If AI is powerful tool in determining who get's the interview, it should also be a tool available to job seekers to help navigate this pathway. Now, two Canadian AI tools are flipping the script by arming job seekers with the same data-driven insights and support.
.
GuruLink’s Path Pilot and OpportuNext are designed to help workers compete in an AI-driven job market.
.
Both tools were created in collaboration with the Future Skills Centre (FSC), which has invested more than $280 million since 2019 in research and innovation initiatives to ensure both workers and employers can adapt to the shifting tides of the job market.
.
Tricia Williams, FSC Director of Research, Evaluation, and Knowledge Mobilization, said she believes AI tools can dramatically improve skills matching, targeted career guidance, and recruitment results. She noted that FSC has focused on “ensuring that AI tools addressing these challenges identify and mitigate any bias and discrimination embedded in their design.”
.
“The world of data is transforming dramatically, and we need AI-enabled tools that respond to Canadians’ critical information needs: to understand opportunities such as job vacancies, skill demands, and salaries and to understand potential pathways such as career guidance and skills training,” Williams added.
.
Here’s how these AI platforms are helping job seekers stay competitive.
.
Path Pilot
www.pathpilot.ai
.
Path Pilot is an AI-driven career assistant developed by Toronto-based GuruLink, designed to support individuals in navigating their career journeys with personalized guidance and resources.
.
The tool is ideal for professionals aiming to advance their careers at any stage, and those entering the workforce or transitioning into new roles.
.
Path Pilot acts as a career assistant by analyzing a user’s experience, goals, and skill gaps to provide personalized job matches, résumé support, and interview preparation. Through an interactive chatbot, it assesses job fit and suggests next steps, whether it’s refining a résumé, identifying missing skills, or recommending courses to stay competitive.
.
The platform’s multilingual support makes it accessible to a diverse audience, allowing users to perfect their résumés, refine their applications, and prepare for interviews in their preferred language.
.
According to GuruLink Co-Founder Drew Lindsay, Path Pilot was designed with responsible AI at its core.
.
“I believe the net effect of AI will be positive but it could create some rough waters in the interim,” Lindsay said. “Using AI to combat the potential ramifications or negative impacts that AI could have is really interesting.”
.
GuruLink was the first company in Canada to earn ISO 42,001 certification for responsible AI development. This certification requires monthly automated audits to identify risks, such as bias, inclusiveness, and repetitiveness.
.
OpportuNext
www.opportunext.ca
.
Career changes can feel like a leap into the unknown, but OpportuNext aims to turn uncertainty into strategy. Designed for Canadians looking to switch careers or explore new opportunities, the AI-powered tool analyzes billions of data points to match users with jobs that fit their skills, education, and experience.
.
“The goal is for people to know how they compare to the rest of the labour market,” said Fabien Forge, Senior Data Scientist at the Conference Board of Canada. “OpportuNext brings facts to feelings.”
.
Using 13 billion data points and AI-powered insights, OpportuNext analyzes over 30,000 career profiles to provide personalized career recommendations. Users enter their current job title or education, and the system generates insights on salary expectations, long-term job growth, and in-demand skills based on real-time labour market data.
.
From there, it ranks career options using a scoring system that highlights roles requiring similar education and skills, helping users see where they already qualify and where they may need to upskill.
.
According to Forge, the idea for OpportuNext took shape during the COVID-19 pandemic, when entire industries were thrown into chaos. Some jobs disappeared overnight, while others exploded in demand, leaving many workers questioning their next move.
.
“At that time, people were saying, ‘I feel like I could do this job,’ but they needed data to back that up,” Forge explained.
.
To stay up to date, OpportuNext partners with Vicinity Jobs, an AI-powered system that scrapes hundreds of thousands of job postings each month. The platform analyzes real employer demands, including skills and certifications, to continuously refine its recommendations.
.
“It’s big, big data work,” said Forge. “We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of unique job postings and a moving window over the last three to four years, so that’s a lot of information to compute. We go from a lot of data points into something that users can digest.”
.
With AI doing the heavy lifting, OpportuNext aims to help Canadians take control of their careers, whether making a small pivot or a complete leap into something new.
.
Clearly we have two tools that can be of tremendous assistance in supporting your clients or students in finding employment. And yet, perhaps there's a little voice in your head saying, "it provides career guidance and skills training? It matches users with jobs that fit their skills, education, and experience? Isn't this what career professionals do?"
.
Word processing programs help people prepare and modify resumes. Indeed helps aggregate job postings from thousands of different websites. LinkedIn helps identify key decision makers. These are all tools and AI is just the latest tool.
.
It takes a skilled professional to help job seekers make the most of these tools. An experienced job developer can help draw context from contradictory information, balance what AI is saying against their own experience working with employers and help motivate a disheartened client or student.
.
Tools such as this can be tremendously impactful in helping your clients build momentum, compete more effectively with other candidates and walk into interviews better prepared. Tools such as these can provide your clients with 24-hour supports and thereby allow job developers to focus on fostering employer and client relationships.
.
We’ll be discussing the challenge of applying for posted jobs at our #MotivatingMondays meeting of the Canadian Job Development Network, Monday Mar. 17th at 8:30am Pacific; 9:30am Mountain; 10:30am Central; 11:30am Eastern; 12:30pm Atlantic and at 1pm in Newfoundland.
.
On the morning of Monday March 17th 'Click this Link' to join the session LIVE.
| 
