Artificial intelligence is now more routinely being used by executives to support career exploration, positioning and executive transition planning. From CV refinement to market research and narrative development, its use is no longer experimental. However, its usefulness in senior-level decision-making remains far less clear.
Among Rialto clients navigating executive transitions, two concerns are raised consistently: whether recruiters can detect AI-assisted applications, and whether AI should be trusted to design an executive career strategy.
The short answers are: they can so use it appropriately; let it provide insight, but never rely on it unthinkingly.
Both questions reveal something important about where executives currently are with these tools: curious, cautious and not entirely sure where the line is. That uncertainty is understandable. AI tools have become genuinely sophisticated, but the marketing around them has consistently outpaced the honest conversation about their limitations. Getting this wrong at senior level carries real consequences, particularly in the face of structural downward pressure in parts of the job market.
A few things are worth holding in mind:
1. Clarify what you actually want from the next stage
Authenticity and honesty in career planning are essential to avoiding destabilising wrong steps. This starts with working through difficult questions: what you really want and need from a role, what you are willing to offer, where your limitations may be at this stage of your career and where you see yourself in five to ten years.
Is this the right time for a leap upwards? Will the role offer the right level of challenge? Are you moving into a declining sector out of urgency, when you might be better to pause, reskill or pivot into a growth area?
These are precisely the conversations Rialto consultants are having weekly with senior leaders across sectors. Do get in touch if we can support you in this way.
AI can help structure these questions, but it cannot interrogate your assumptions with the depth or challenge required at this level. (Read previous insights on High Performer to Executive Leader and High Stakes Executive Career Pivots.)
2. Interpret market reality and timing
Understanding market conditions is critical. The UK senior job market has tightened sharply. ONS data shows vacancies at their lowest level since early 2021, with 2.5 unemployed people per vacancy. What sustains executive relevance in this environment is AI-ready leadership capability and nuanced emotional intelligence, which boards are now actively assessing, not generic and indistinct AI-generated responses.
In this environment, timing and positioning matter as much as capability.
AI is genuinely useful for stress-testing your positioning, accelerating research and refining your personal brand narrative as an executive. It can support rapid research and scenario testing, helping you map sectors, roles and emerging trends.
However, interpretation – what is relevant to your specific profile and trajectory – remains a human judgement, not an AI one.
3. Assess your transferable authority
The executives who build resilient careers in the AI economy share certain characteristics that have nothing to do with their CV software or responses to Gen AI prompts.
They understand their transferable authority: what they have achieved, but also the specific credibility, network and strategic perspectives that are genuinely transferable across contexts.
They invest in their visibility within the markets where the next opportunity is most likely to emerge. They have relationships with search professionals, peers and board members that exist before any transition begins.
And they have worked through the harder questions about the kind of role they want to do next, the conditions in which they perform best and the sectors and organisations where their capabilities will be genuinely valued.
While AI can help refine how this is articulated, it cannot build the underlying capital.
4. Validate decisions through trusted advisors or executive career coaching
Executive transitions are rarely technical exercises. They are high-stakes decisions involving identity, confidence, timing and risk. This is where trusted advisers, mentors or coaches play an essential role: challenging assumptions, identifying blind spots and grounding decisions in lived market experience and emotional intelligence.
At senior level, career progression is not purely linear – and nor should it be. The strongest executive transitions often emerge from a combination of deliberate planning and opportunistic recognition – the ability to identify moments where a role, challenge or organisation presents a unique intersection of timing, capability and unmet need.
A move will rarely fit neatly into a pre-defined trajectory, but a well-timed and considered one should enhance an individual’s distinctive position in the market over time.
The role of trusted external counsel is to test these decisions with objectivity: to distinguish between momentum and opportunity, between reactive change and strategic advantage, and between short-term appeal and longer-term positioning strength.
A large language model does not have the context, the professional relationship or the emotional range to navigate any of that alongside you.
Emotional intelligence and context cannot be automated. Leaders of high-performing teams consistently identify emotional and social intelligence among the most important success factors and as human capabilities that technology cannot replicate.
Boards and search committees know that organisational growth and security depend on hiring genuine AI talent: executives and senior leaders who can navigate AI transformation, not just those who can show they are familiar with AI tools.
There is a meaningful difference between a leader who has used ChatGPT to polish their profile and one who can articulate a credible, considered position on workforce transformation and organisational redesign.
At Rialto, we help clients identify exactly where AI tools add value and where to step back.
Our consultants bring contextual market knowledge, network access and the kind of long-term professional relationship that career strategy at senior level actually requires.
If you are thinking seriously about your next move, or about building the kind of executive career that will remain relevant as the AI economy matures, we would welcome a conversation.
(See our companion insight, Using AI in an Active Executive Transition – and Where It Can Trip You Up.)
Should I use tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude to help plan my career?
For research, stress-testing your positioning and understanding the markets where your capabilities are most valued, yes. For generating your strategy, your narrative or your decisions, no. The executives who get the most out of AI treat it as a thinking partner that sharpens their own thinking, rather than a content generator that does the thinking for them.
Will AI replace executive search?
No. Executive search at the most senior level is built on relationships, judgement and the ability to assess cultural and strategic fit. AI tools support search consultants with research, scheduling and shortlisting, but the core work of senior search remains human and relational. If anything, the rise of AI is increasing the value of trusted human advisers, not reducing it.
What is AI-ready leadership capability and why do boards care about it?
AI-ready leadership capability is the ability to lead an organisation through AI transformation. It includes making sound judgements about where AI should and should not be embedded into decision-making, redesigning workforce structures and roles, and bringing leadership teams and boards through the change. Recent UK research from the CIPD shows that boards are now actively assessing for this in senior hires. Familiarity with AI tools alone is no longer enough.
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