You put your career on hold to care for someone who needed you and kept a household running while holding everyone else together. And now you’re staring down a job market that feels like it moved on without you – especially with the advent of AI.
Here’s what you need to hear about AI: you are not behind. You are not out of touch. And you are absolutely the kind of person who can figure out how to use AI, and use it to your advantage.
Because right now, AI isn’t just a tech industry buzzword. It’s a practical tool that can make your job search faster, less painful, and maybe even a little less terrifying. And on top of that? Learning to use it hands you something unexpected: a story to tell in interviews that signals you’re exactly the kind of forward-thinking candidate employers are scrambling to hire.
Two reasons every returner should be using AI. Let’s get into it.
Reason #1: It Takes the Grind Out of Job Searching
Let’s be honest about what job searching actually feels like. You find a posting that looks promising. You spend two hours tailoring your resume. You agonize over a cover letter that sounds like you, but also like you really want this job, but also not desperate. You hit submit. Silence. Repeat.
It’s not just time-consuming – it’s demoralizing. And when you’re already navigating the emotional complexity of returning to work after years away, that grind can knock you flat.
AI changes the math.
Finding the right jobs faster. Tools like Teal use AI to match your skills and experience to job listings, flag roles you might not have thought to search for, and help you track applications in one place. Instead of scrolling job boards for hours, you can describe what you’re looking for and let AI surface the options.
Customizing your resume without starting from scratch every time. One of the hardest parts of applying for jobs is making your resume speak directly to each posting. You can paste a job description into an AI assistant like Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini, share your resume or a summary of your background, and ask it to help you reframe your experience in the language that employer is actually using. It won’t fabricate skills you don’t have, but it will help you see and articulate the ones you do.
Writing authentic cover letters that highlight your relevant skills. A woman who shared her story on Reddit went from months of silence to landing five job interviews in a single week after she started using AI as her co-writer. Her approach was simple: feed the AI the job description, tell it about yourself, and iterate until the letter sounds like you making a compelling case for this role. She got hired within 30 days. A ResumeBuilder.com survey found that 3 in 4 job seekers who used AI to write their resume got an interview. Three in four.
Preparing for interviews. Ask Claude or ChatGPT to play the role of a hiring manager for the job you’re applying to. Ask it to throw tough questions at you, including the ones about your career gap. Practice your answers out loud. Ask for feedback. It’s like having an interview coach available at midnight who never gets tired of your questions.
None of this replaces the job discernment, the personality, and the relationship-building that only you can bring to the process. But it handles the grind so you don’t have to.
Reason #2: It Makes You a More Competitive Candidate
Here’s the even more important reason to use AI: It won’t just help you find a job. It can help you get one.
Employers across nearly every industry are actively looking for people who understand AI and can work alongside it. The percent of jobs on LinkedIn listing an AI literacy skill increased more than six times over the past year. The skills employers want are changing faster than ever, and comfort with AI is near the top of the list.
That gap in your resume? We know it can feel like a flashing red light. Returners are often unfairly perceived as out of touch, as people who need to “catch up.” Getting fluent in AI gives you a concrete way to counter that narrative. And with AI, the playing field is more level – nearly everyone in the job market is figuring out how to use it.
Imagine an interviewer asking: “What have you been doing to stay current?” Instead of scrambling, you say: “I’ve been using AI tools – for my job search, to organize a project I’ve been working on, and to get familiar with how these tools are reshaping work. I’ve been experimenting with prompt writing and honestly find it intuitive.”
That answer lands differently. It signals curiosity. Adaptability. Awareness. All things caregivers have in abundance – and all things employers say they want.
Feel intimidated by AI? Don’t. These tools are built for everyone — no engineering background required — but the real advantage comes from you as the human in the loop: your judgment, your context, and your ability to guide and refine what AI produces.
All you need is enough hands-on experience to speak to it authentically. And the beautiful thing is, you can start building that experience today, for free, in the process of doing your job search.
Where to Start
You don’t need a course to begin – just open Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini and start experimenting. But if you want a bit more structure, these free resources are excellent:
- Anthropic Academy – Anthropic (the company that makes Claude) offers 13 free self-paced courses, from a beginner-friendly “Claude 101” all the way to more advanced topics. Every course is free, requires only an email to sign up, and awards a certificate on completion – something you can add to your LinkedIn profile.
- Learn Prompting – A free, beginner-friendly course on how to communicate with AI tools effectively. This is the foundational skill that makes everything else click.
- Codecademy: Intro to ChatGPT – Short, practical, completely free.
- DeepLearning.AI Short Courses – Bite-sized free courses, including one specifically on prompt engineering for everyday use.
- Teal – An AI-powered job search platform built specifically for job seekers; great for resume tailoring and tracking applications.
- Google AI Essentials – Learn the fundamentals of generative AI with this free hands-on course, including strategies for avoiding bias and harm.
You’ve spent the last stretch of your life doing something genuinely hard. You showed up every day for someone else, even when it cost you something. That doesn’t mean you’ve fallen behind – and AI gives you an opportunity to get ahead. It’s one of the most practical tools you have to get where you want to go faster.
Start small. Open a chat window. Tell it what you’re looking for. See what happens.
A note from the “author”: I “wrote” this whole post using Claude by giving it the key points I wanted to make, the kinds of resources I wanted to include, and telling it to read other Path Forward blog posts so it could mimic our usual tone of voice. I also told it a little about what it’s like to be a returner (I’ve been there!) Then I fact checked what it wrote, asked for sources on the data, and made some light edits and adjustments. The whole thing took 30 minutes tops. These tools can completely change how you approach any task!