Turn Claude Into the Career Advisor You Can't Afford to Hire
A copy-paste prompt that turns Claude into a sharp, honest career strategist who helps you think through your next move, not just tidy your CV.
You keep asking your group chat for career advice. They love you, which is exactly the problem.
Your friends want you to be happy. Your mum wants you to be safe. Your mentor saw you two jobs ago and is a bit out of date. So you sit on the big questions, should I ask for the promotion, do I jump to the new role, am I actually good at this or just comfortable, and you circle the same thoughts for months without moving.
The hidden cost isn't the bad advice. It's the year you spend stuck because no one in your life has the time, the distance, or the honesty to properly think it through with you. Good career strategists cost hundreds an hour and you see them twice. Meanwhile the decision just sits there, quietly getting more expensive.
Here's the thing. You already pay for Claude. You're just using it to reword emails when it could be the sharpest thinking partner you've ever had about your actual career. Not to decide for you. To ask you the questions a great advisor would, pull apart your reasoning, and hand the decision back to you clearer than you found it.
What's inside
- A prompt that turns Claude into a career strategist who interviews you before it advises you.
- A structured read on your situation: what you're actually optimising for, what you're avoiding, and the moves worth making.
- A way to pressure-test any big career decision before you commit to it.
- I run every messy career decision through this before I talk to a single human. By the time I do, I already know what I think, and I sound like it.
The prompt
Paste this into Claude and answer honestly. The messier your answers, the sharper the read at the end.
You are my personal career advisor. You are sharp, experienced, and honest with me the way a great mentor is honest: warm, direct, and unwilling to let me talk myself into a comfortable answer. Do not give me advice yet. First, interview me. Ask me one question at a time, and wait for my answer before the next one. Work through: 1. Where I am now (role, level, industry, how long, how I actually feel about it) 2. What triggered me to think about this now 3. What I say I want in the next 2 to 5 years 4. What I'm quietly worried about or avoiding 5. What "success" actually means to me, in my own words, not a job title Ask follow-ups when my answers are vague, contradictory, or too polished. Push gently. If I give you a surface-level answer, dig one layer deeper before moving on. Once you genuinely understand my situation, stop interviewing and give me: - A clear read on what I actually seem to be optimising for versus what I say I want - The two or three career moves worth seriously considering, with the honest trade-offs of each - The one thing I appear to be avoiding, named plainly - Three questions I should sit with before I decide anything Do not make the decision for me. Your job is to make my own thinking sharper and hand it back to me. Challenge my reasoning where it's weak, and tell me directly if I'm underselling or overselling myself. Start by asking your first question.
What just happened: Claude stopped being an email rewriter and became the honest career strategist you couldn't otherwise afford.
How to use it
- 1Paste the prompt into Claude and answer its questions honestly. The messier and more truthful your answers, the better the read at the end.
- 2When Claude pushes back or asks a follow-up, resist the urge to give the tidy version. The value is in the layer underneath.
- 3Once it hands you its read, argue with it. Say "I think you're wrong about X because..." and let it strengthen or drop the point. This is where the real thinking happens.
Bonus: Make it yours
Add a line at the top with your hard constraints so Claude stops suggesting moves that were never on the table.
Add this to the top of the prompt: "I can't relocate," "I need to stay above $X," or "I have 18 months of runway." Claude will stop suggesting moves that were never on the table.
Payoff: Claude now treats your real constraints as guardrails, not suggestions to argue around.
Career advice is only useful when it makes your own thinking sharper. This prompt won't decide for you, but it will hand the decision back to you clearer than you found it. That's the whole point.
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