COACH — AI Career Guidance for Small Businesses

COACH delivers AI-powered career guidance to colleges and workforce programs so every learner gets personalized advising at scale. For small businesses, COACH is a helpful companion for managing employee growth, improving hiring, and building local training ties — especially when you don’t have a full HR department or a stack of career coaches on payroll.

If your business is the kind where one person wears three hats, COACH can take some of the “coach” work off their plate. It won’t replace real managers, but it can give clear, consistent career advice to employees, map skill gaps, and help connect people with training and mentoring opportunities.

Support employee career development and growth

Small businesses often want to keep good people but struggle to offer clear career paths. COACH can help by creating personalized learning plans and career roadmaps for employees. For example:

• Use COACH to assess current skills and suggest next steps — short courses, on-the-job tasks, or micro-credentials.
• Give employees a simple plan: 3 skills to build in 90 days, and one stretch project to try.
• Let managers review the plan and turn it into real tasks, so development becomes part of the weekly workflow.

Enhance recruitment strategies with tailored guidance

Hiring is expensive. COACH can sharpen your recruitment by helping you spot candidates whose career interests match your role long-term. Practical ideas:

• Create job posts that highlight development paths the company offers, so candidates see growth potential upfront.
• Use COACH insights to ask better interview questions about learning goals and fit.
• Offer personalized onboarding roadmaps so new hires know what success looks like in months 1, 3, and 6.

Provide resources for employee skill development

Small budgets mean you can’t send everyone to conferences. COACH suggests affordable, targeted resources employees can use on their own time. Ways to use this feature:

• Recommend specific short courses, books, or exercises tied to real tasks at your company.
• Bundle suggested resources into weekly learning bites — 20 minutes a day that actually add up.
• Track progress and celebrate small wins publicly (a Slack shoutout goes a long way).

Utilize for mentorship programs within the company

Mentorship is powerful but often informal and messy. COACH helps structure mentorship without heavy admin:

• Match mentors and mentees based on goals, not just titles. COACH can suggest pairings that make sense.
• Create short, guided mentorship plans: 6 sessions with topics and suggested activities for each meeting.
• Give mentors a checklist so they don’t have to invent ways to help — they can be effective and not overwhelmed.

Engage with local colleges for workforce training

Small businesses that work with local colleges win talent pipelines. COACH’s origins in advising for colleges make it useful here:

• Use the tool’s outputs to communicate clear skill needs to college partners.
• Partner on internships that follow COACH-designed learning plans — interns get useful experience and you get a better match.
• Create micro-internships or short projects that align with local curricula so students arrive job-ready.

Pros and cons

• Pros
  • Personalized career guidance at scale — good for teams without full HR support.
  • Helps retain employees by showing clear growth paths.
  • Supports hiring and onboarding with practical, action-focused plans.
  • Useful for building ties with colleges and local training programs.
• Cons
  • Designed mainly for colleges and workforce programs, so small business features may feel indirect.
  • May require some setup and manager buy-in to turn suggestions into real work items.
  • Without a dedicated HR lead, someone has to shepherd the plans so they don’t gather dust.

COACH is not a magic wand, but it’s a solid tool for small businesses that want to be smarter about employee growth without hiring a full HR team. If you’re serious about keeping and growing your people, COACH gives a framework and practical steps you can use right away.

Ready to start building clearer career paths at your small business? Try mapping one employee’s 90-day plan this week — use the ideas above, check what works, and tweak. Small changes now keep good people later.