AI Academy | AI for HR

AI for HR

HR professionals face an impossible equation: workforce demands are scaling exponentially while human capacity remains fixed. The result is record burnout, spiraling costs, and a reactive operating model that simply cannot keep pace. This professional certificate series is designed to help you break free from that trap and transform into a strategic, AI-forward HR leader.

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4 Course Series Duration 4 hours
Released Jan 2026

Course Level Beginner to Advanced

Certification Professional certificate awarded after exam

Format On-demand videos to learn at your own pace

About This Series

The AI for HR Professional Certificate is a comprehensive learning journey designed to transform how you approach human resources in the age of artificial intelligence. You will move from understanding the strategic imperative for AI adoption to building a complete, prioritized action plan for your specific role and organization.

Across four courses, you will master frameworks for identifying and prioritizing AI opportunities, learn to navigate the complex technology landscape with confidence, and develop hands-on skills that put you ahead of the vast majority of HR professionals. Whether you are a frontline practitioner managing daily operations or a senior leader responsible for workforce strategy, this series will equip you with the mindset, methodology, and practical capabilities to lead AI transformation in your organization.

You'll Learn To

Diagnose the fundamental capacity constraints limiting traditional HR operating models and understand why AI represents a transformational solution.
Apply a strategic framework to categorize AI opportunities by their value and transformation potential.
Build a comprehensive, prioritized AI blueprint tailored to your specific role and organizational context.
Navigate the complex AI technology landscape using a systematic approach to tool selection and vendor evaluation.
Master essential hands-on AI skills that enable immediate execution on your prioritized use cases.
Transform from a reactive administrator to a strategic, AI-forward HR leader who delivers measurable business impact.

Key Questions Addressed

This series provides a comprehensive playbook for professional services leaders asking the most critical questions about the future:

Why is the traditional HR operating model fundamentally unsustainable, and what makes AI different from previous technology investments?
Where should I focus my limited time and resources to achieve the greatest impact with AI?
How do I move from isolated experiments to a systematic, strategic approach to AI adoption?
What specific AI capabilities can automate my most time-consuming tasks and amplify my strategic impact?
How do I evaluate and select the right AI technologies for my specific use cases and organizational context?

Who It's For

This certificate series is designed for:

HR Practitioners: HR Managers, HR Business Partners, Recruiters, Talent Acquisition Specialists, L&D Professionals, Compensation and Benefits Analysts, and HR Operations staff seeking to automate administrative work and elevate their strategic contribution.
HR Leaders: Directors, VPs, and CHROs responsible for building scalable, high-performing HR functions and driving workforce strategy at the organizational level.
Business Leaders: Executives and managers outside HR who want to understand how AI-powered human resources can improve workforce productivity, retention, and organizational performance.

What You'll Do

Engage with interactive video lessons that combine strategic frameworks with real-world demonstrations.
Complete guided exercises to identify your biggest time-consuming tasks, strategic challenges, and transformation opportunities.
Build two comprehensive workbooks: a Use Case Workbook cataloging bottom-up efficiency opportunities and a Problem-Based Workbook mapping top-down strategic initiatives.
Practice hands-on AI skills including advanced prompting techniques, building custom AI assistants, conducting AI-powered research, and creating knowledge bases from your own documents.
Develop a prioritized, sequenced AI action plan you can begin executing immediately.

Course Syllabus

Course 1: Your AI Opportunity in HR
This foundational course diagnoses the structural problem at the heart of traditional HR operations: the human capacity constraint. You will explore how workforce demands have outpaced human bandwidth, why previous technology investments failed to solve the bottleneck, and what makes generative AI fundamentally different from anything that came before.

Through industry data, adoption trends, and real-world case studies from leading organizations, you will understand why AI adoption in HR has reached a tipping point…and why maintaining the status quo is no longer a viable strategy. By the end of this course, you will have a clear-eyed view of the opportunity and the urgency, setting the foundation for everything that follows.

What You’ll Learn
- Identify the fundamental tension between strategic HR work and reactive administrative demands that affects every HR professional.
- Analyze the data on HR burnout, cost escalation, and capacity constraints that prove the old operating model is unsustainable.
- Differentiate generative AI from previous HR technology investments and understand why it represents a fundamentally different kind of capability.
- Evaluate real-world case studies of organizations achieving transformational results through AI-enabled HR operations.
- Articulate the competitive and organizational risks of delayed AI adoption in HR.
Course 2: The AI-Powered Playbook for HR
This course introduces the 3 A's Framework, a simple yet powerful mental model for categorizing and prioritizing AI opportunities in HR. You will move beyond random experimentation to a strategic approach that builds momentum systematically.

Through dozens of HR-specific use cases spanning practitioner and leadership roles, you will explore how AI can eliminate repetitive administrative work, enhance your strategic capabilities, and enable transformational outcomes that were previously impossible. By the end of this course, you will have a preliminary AI playbook with prioritized opportunities tailored to your role.

What You’ll Learn
- Apply the 3 A's Framework to categorize any AI opportunity by its value and transformation potential.
- Identify automation opportunities that eliminate repetitive, time-consuming tasks and free up capacity for strategic work.
- Leverage augmentation to enhance your uniquely human skills with AI as a copilot.
- Envision acceleration opportunities that fundamentally reinvent processes and create capabilities that were previously impossible.
- Prioritize opportunities based on impact, feasibility, and alignment with your goals.
Course 3: Finding Your AI Advantage in HR
About This Course

This course introduces two complementary approaches for comprehensive AI opportunity discovery: the Use Case Model (bottom-up) and the Problem-Based Model (top-down). Together, they give you a complete picture of both tactical efficiency gains and strategic transformation opportunities.

You will learn to unbundle your role and workflows into component tasks, evaluate each for AI applicability, and build a comprehensive inventory of possibilities. You will also learn to start with your biggest strategic challenges and work backward to find AI solutions that create transformational value. By the end of this course, you will have two prioritized workbooks that form your personal AI Blueprint, a sequenced action plan you can actually execute.

What You’ll Learn
- Unbundle your role and workflows into component tasks to discover AI opportunities hiding in plain sight.
- Assess each task for AI applicability, time savings potential, and implementation feasibility.
- Articulate strategic problems as clear statements with quantified value to build compelling business cases.
- Prioritize opportunities using a structured methodology that balances value, ability, and strategic alignment.
- Create a balanced portfolio of quick wins and strategic investments that build momentum over time.
Course 4: Applied AI for HR
This capstone course bridges the gap between strategy and execution. You will learn a systematic framework for navigating the complex AI technology landscape, starting with the tools you already own before exploring new solutions. You will also master the essential hands-on skills that separate AI-forward professionals from everyone else.

Through live demonstrations and guided practice, you will develop proficiency in advanced prompting techniques, building custom AI assistants, conducting AI-powered research, and creating knowledge bases from your own documents. By the end of this course, you will have the practical capabilities to begin executing on your AI Blueprint immediately.

What You’ll Learn
- Navigate the AI technology landscape using a tiered framework that minimizes risk and maximizes existing investments.
- Evaluate AI vendors using a structured methodology that separates real solutions from marketing hype.
- Master high-performance prompting techniques that dramatically improve AI output quality.
- Build custom AI assistants that turn your best prompts into reusable, shareable applications.
- Leverage AI-powered deep research capabilities to synthesize complex information in minutes instead of hours.
- Create AI knowledge bases grounded in your own trusted documents for accurate, hallucination-free answers.
Final Exam

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Dshanya Reese
Strategic Insurance Marketer

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Erin Carpenter
Sr. Digital Marketing Director

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Yadin Porter de León
Leading Global CXO

About the Instructor

Mike Kaput is a marketing and business AI expert, speaker, and author. In his role as SmarterX’s Chief Content Officer, he uses dozens of powerful AI tools daily to increase productivity and performance across hundreds of use cases. And his actionable talks can teach you and your team how to do the same thing.

Mike’s talks help companies of every size in any industry to capture massive productivity and performance gains using practical AI knowledge, use cases, and tools. They also make AI approachable and accessible for professionals at every level and in every function.

The result is that companies in every industry—including The Financial Times, Vimeo, and Vodafone—have come away from Mike’s talks armed with everything they need to start building a competitive advantage with AI.

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