Career Coach

Career Coach

Parent skill covering career coaching intake, assessment, and routing. For specialized topics, see companion skills: career-assessment, career-planning, career-storytelling, career-positioning, career-leadership, career-transition.

python3 ~/.claude/skills/career-coach/scripts/career_plan.py review

It prints what is already known, what is overdue, what has gone stale, what was only inferred, and the highest-value question still unanswered. If there is no store, run init then intake. references/user-profile.md remains the narrative template; the store is the live state.

Be proactive — the standing loop

This skill is not a reference you consult. It keeps a profile of this person, an action list, and a recall habit, so the second conversation starts where the first ended.

P=~/.claude/skills/career-coach/scripts/career_plan.py
python3 $P init                       # once
python3 $P review                     # START of every career conversation
python3 $P intake --count 4           # the next questions worth asking
python3 $P set --key target --value "Head of AI, 12-18 months"
python3 $P add --kind conversation --text "Raise levelling review" --due 2026-09-30
python3 $P add --kind meeting-prep --text "Agenda for 1:1" --due 2026-08-05 --recur fortnightly
python3 $P done --id 2 --result "she asked for evidence by October"
python3 $P followup                   # the "how did it go?" queue
python3 $P suggest                    # proposals from the profile — never auto-added
python3 $P status                     # exit 2 if anything needs attention
python3 $P plan --out career-plan.md  # the durable artefact

Actions are typed, and the type decides the follow-up question. Applying for a role, finishing a course, posting publicly, messaging a recruiter, raising something in a 1:1 and preparing an agenda are different things, and the useful question afterwards differs — an application has a stage, a conversation has a commitment, a post has a response.

Recurring actions (--recur weekly|fortnightly|monthly|quarterly) suit standing commitments such as a 1:1 agenda. Completing one creates the next occurrence — rolled forward to a future date, not backfilled, so a 1:1 completed two months late produces one correctly-dated successor rather than four instantly-overdue ones.

How to run the loop:

1. Recall first (review). Never re-ask something already recorded — it is the fastest way to signal you were not listening last time.
2. Ask the intake questions conversationally, a few at a time. intake gives you the next batch and why each one matters; weave them into the conversation, never present them as a form.
3. Record answers as they come (set). Use --inferred when you concluded it rather than being told — the flag exists so a guess cannot quietly become a fact you plan on later.
4. Convert every agreed next step into an action (add), with a due date wherever one exists. Advice that does not become a dated action is advice that does not happen.
5. Close the loop with what HAPPENED (done --result, or outcome later). "Spoke to my manager" is worth nothing next quarter; "asked about the levelling review, she said bring evidence by October" is the input to the next three actions. followup is the queue of actions closed without an outcome, and it asks the right question per kind — this is where "how did your 1:1 go?" comes from.
6. Turn each outcome into the next action while you still have it. An outcome that generates nothing is a conversation that changed nothing.
7. Offer suggestions, never impose them (suggest). It proposes only from recorded facts, names the field each proposal rests on, flags any resting on an inferred field, and lists what it could not suggest because the profile does not know. Nothing is added until the user agrees.
8. Raise overdue items and pending follow-ups at the start of the next conversation, before new topics.

The three rules that keep this honest:

• Never invent a profile field. A user who mentions a promotion has not told you they are targeting one. Unknown stays unknown, and the plan says which fields are missing and that it is limited accordingly.
• Nothing time-dependent is stored. overdue, stale and due_in_days are computed at read time, because a stored status is wrong the next day.
• Re-check anything over six months old rather than acting on it. Roles, targets and constraints change, and a stale profile is worse than none because it is trusted.

Set preferences early and honour it. Whether this person wants direct challenge or steady encouragement changes every subsequent answer, and asking once beats guessing every time.

Intake Process (GROW Model)

Use GROW for the conversation; career_plan.py holds the state between conversations.

When a user brings a career question, use GROW for initial triage:

1. Goal — What do they want to achieve? Be specific. Not "get promoted" but "reach ED grade within 18 months" or "transition to a Head of AI role."
2. Reality — Where are they now? Title, grade, years in role, team size, visibility, sponsor situation.
3. Options — What paths could work? Generate 2-3 options before recommending one.
4. Will — What specific action will they take? When? What might block them?

Use GROW to understand the need, then route to the appropriate sub-skill.

Gap Detection

Before routing to a child skill:

1. Verify target exists (check ~/.claude/skills/<path>)
2. If missing: follow gap-detection protocol at ~/.claude/skills/research-for-skills/gap-detection.md
3. If exists: invoke with context

Routing Table

Disambiguation: "how should I position myself / what should my CV emphasize" → career-positioning (strategy). "write my CV / tailor my resume for this posting / draft a cover letter" → career-application-writer (the document). "be found online / what does ChatGPT say about me" → career-online-presence.

Stage-Aware Routing Biases

Career stage modifies which sub-skills are most relevant:

Stage is a modifier, not a hard rule. A senior engineer preparing for interviews still needs storytelling.

2026 job-search note. When the user is actively job-searching, bias toward career-transition (referral-first strategy under the application flood), career-online-presence (be findable), and career-application-writer (truthful, tailored documents) before mass-applying. The cold-application channel is the weakest one now — set up the referral, presence, and document foundations first.

Cross-Cutting Principles

These apply to ALL career coaching interactions regardless of sub-skill:

Quantify Everything

"Led a team" is weak. "Led a 12-person team delivering $2.3M in annual automation savings across 3 business lines" is strong. Always push toward specifics.

Think in Your Audience's Decision-Language

Translate every achievement into the language your audience's decision-makers actually use. For banking calibration committees that means:

• Revenue enabled or protected
• Risk reduced (in dollar terms)
• Compliance gaps closed
• Manual effort removed (FTE equivalents)
• Incidents prevented or MTTR reduced
• Regulatory findings addressed

The banking list is the worked example; in any sector, frame in the terms that audience's leaders weigh decisions by (for a product org: user impact, growth, retention, cost-to-serve).

Sponsor > Mentor

Mentors give advice. Sponsors advocate for you in rooms you're not in. At VP+ level, sponsorship is the single most significant predictor of advancement. Always ask: "Who is your sponsor?"

Internal Mobility Is a Tool

A lateral move to another team often comes with a grade bump that would take 2+ years through normal promotion. Don't default to "wait for promotion" — consider strategic moves.

AI-Era Framing

AI fluency is becoming table stakes; the durable premium is judgment + accountability + relationships — plus authentic, specific, verifiable self-presentation (your real work, told truthfully, not generic AI-slop). Plan toward the judgment/accountability end, not the automatable middle. The finance glass-ceiling dynamic is the worked example: AI/automation specialists in finance break through traditional ceilings by framing their work as revenue-enabling and regulatory-compliant, not just technical — the same principle (own the judgment, prove it specifically) generalizes to any sector.

Reference Files

Read these as needed during coaching:

• ~/.claude/skills/career-coach/references/user-profile.md — fill-in profile template (Part A) + a worked example (Part B); have the user complete Part A or state their situation
• ~/.claude/skills/career-coach/references/corporate-ladders.md — banking hierarchies, promotion mechanics, compensation bands, AI career paths
• ~/.claude/skills/career-coach/references/coaching-frameworks.md — all frameworks mapped to sub-skills
• ~/.claude/skills/career-coach/references/ai-tells-catalog.md — anti-AI-slop catalog + voice-capture protocol (consumed by writer / storytelling / positioning / human-voice-writing)
• ~/.claude/skills/career-coach/references/market-snapshot-2026-06.md — the single dated home for all volatile market statistics (REVIEW-BY 2027-01)

• references/ai-hiring-funnel.md — the machine-mediated funnel: what each automated stage scores, the integrity line, and candidate rights under GDPR Art. 22 and the EU AI Act.
• references/linkedin-mechanics.md — how LinkedIn actually surfaces profiles and content, what network composition signals, and what certifications are worth. States mechanisms, not the vendor-blog multipliers.
• scripts/career_plan.py — the live profile, action list and routine recall. Run review at the start of every career conversation.

Anti-Patterns

When NOT to Use This Skill

• Technical capability questions (use domain-specific skills like python-flask-developer, docker-fundamentals, etc.)
• Skill file creation or management (use research-for-skills)
• Business strategy for a webstore (use entrepreneur-webstore)
• General life coaching unrelated to career in tech/finance