Choose the job you want. The roadmap starts from what you already know, puts the job's tools and must-have skills first, fits your hours a week, and gives every step free learning links and a way to prove it.
It fills in the work skills you already use. Leave it empty if you are a student or new to work.
Pick from 910 jobs, or type your own title and add a job post below.
Your plan is saved in this browser. The text of your resume, and what you send to the AI, are saved to ClapAssist so our tools can fill them in for you next time. See or delete.
We ran a made-up resume through the generator on this page. The job now: “Bookkeeper” (read as Bookkeeping, Accounting, and Auditing Clerks). The job wanted: “Accountant” (read as Accountants and Auditors). Mid level, no job post, 5 hours a week. The steps, hours and weeks below are the generator’s own output; we changed nothing.
73%
15 of 25 skills already match, so they never enter the plan. 1 must-have skill is still below the level needed.
29–51 weeks
253 hours in all if every step is needed.
15–26 weeks
The same steps. Only the hours changed.
| Step, in order | Group | Hours | When, at 5 a week |
|---|---|---|---|
| Outlook | The job’s tools | 15 | weeks 1–3 |
| SAP | The job’s tools | 15 | weeks 4–6 |
| Accounting and economics | Must-have | 25 | weeks 7–11 |
| Mathematics | Important | 20 | weeks 12–15 |
| Business and management | Important | 25 | weeks 16–20 |
| English Language | Important | 25 | weeks 21–25 |
| Microsoft Project | Nice to have | 15 | weeks 26–28 |
| SQL | Nice to have | 15 | weeks 29–31 |
| Negotiation | Nice to have | 40 | weeks 32–39 |
| Persuasion | Nice to have | 40 | weeks 40–47 |
| Build one project that uses your new skills | Prove and apply | 12 | weeks 48–50 |
| Add the new skills to your resume and LinkedIn | Prove and apply | 2 | week 50 |
| Check yourself against a real job post | Prove and apply | 1 | week 50 |
| Apply, and practice the interview | Prove and apply | 3 | week 51 |
Why a range of weeks: 4 skills on the list have no level yet (Microsoft Project, SQL, Negotiation, Persuasion). The long end treats them as gaps; the short end treats them as known. If the bookkeeper already knows SQL, for example, rating it pulls every later date closer.
One more line in the report matters here. The job data says most people in this job have a bachelor’s degree; this resume shows training, an associate’s degree or years of experience. The roadmap covers skills, not schooling. So a degree, or a license your area asks for, is a separate step to plan next to it, and it is often the longest one.
Rosa Delgado rosa.delgado@example.com Experience Bookkeeper | Greenfield Dental Group | Jun 2020 - Present - Kept the books for 3 dental clinics: accounts payable, accounts receivable and payroll input - Reconciled 5 bank accounts every month and closed the month by the 5th working day - Prepared the trial balance and supporting files for the outside accountant at year end - Moved invoice approval from paper to QuickBooks Online Education Certificate in Bookkeeping, 2019 Skills QuickBooks Online, Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, Gusto
Six parts. Leave one out and the plan stalls.
The plan only works if it changes with you.
Mark each step Done, Learning or Skip as you go. Done ticks a step off, and the hours left go down. Skip takes out a step you decide you do not need, and the dates after it move closer.
Change the hours on any step that is taking longer, or shorter, than the guess. The weeks after it move by themselves.
Put the plan where you will see it. “Add the roadmap to my calendar (.ics)” puts each step in your own calendar app, and “Save as PDF” gives you a copy to share with a mentor or a manager.
When life gets busy, lower “Hours a week to learn” instead of stopping. A slower plan you keep beats a fast plan you drop.
The same tool, used a little differently.
Leave the current job empty. Add your resume with school projects, or rate your skills yourself. Pick entry level, so the plan asks for Working, not Advanced.
Like the bookkeeper above, many of your gaps will be “partly”, not missing. The roadmap is usually shorter, and your current job is the best place to practice. Show your manager the plan and ask for the tasks on it.
Rate what you still use, not what you used to do. Start with fewer hours a week, then raise them once the routine holds.
The career change roadmap asks for the job you are leaving and shows what carries over first. To see the gap skill by skill before you plan, start with the skills gap analysis.
Pick from 910 jobs, from nurse and electrician to teacher, accountant and developer. Each comes with the work skills, knowledge and tools it uses and how important each one is, from the O*NET 31.0 Database of the U.S. Department of Labor. Paste real job posts and their skills are added and counted.
Your resume does most of the work: every job on it is read as its job in the data, with the level that job builds; your degree fills in what you studied; the tools you name count. One AI button rates the rest from your resume, and you can change any level in one click. You see a readiness score, how many skills match, and where each of your levels comes from.
The job’s tools first, then the must-haves, then the important skills, then the everyday work skills you practice as you go, the extras, and proof and applying. Each step has free courses and videos, a practice task from the job itself, and the line to put on your resume. Mark steps done, learning or skipped, and add the plan to your calendar.
Your levels are compared with all 910 jobs, at your level or one above. Jobs O*NET itself lists as related to yours are marked. See how alike the work is, how ready you are, the skills you share and the few to build, and set any of them as your target in one click.
Our own rules, printed in full. Nothing here is a guess dressed up as data.
| Source | Must have | Important | Nice to have |
|---|---|---|---|
| Work skills and knowledge (O*NET importance, 1 to 5) | 4 or more | 3.25 or more | 2.75 or more |
| Tools in the job data | – | “In demand” for this job, up to six, most important first (see below) | “Hot” across job posts and named by related jobs too, or any tool when you give job posts |
| Skills in your job posts | In half or more of the posts, as a requirement | Asked for in fewer posts | Only in nice-to-have parts |
Which tools come first: for the most searched jobs (data scientist, software developer, data analyst, web developer and a few more) a list we checked by hand, and for the everyday name you picked (“AI engineer” puts PyTorch before SAS). For every other job: 3 points if the job data marks the tool “in demand” for this job, plus 2.5 × the share of related jobs that name it, plus 1.5 × how much more often related jobs name it than all jobs do (Excel is everywhere; Tableau is a data tool). A short list or a list of skills in the job post box counts each skill as asked for. A choice in a post (“Tableau or Power BI”, “Pinecone, Weaviate or FAISS”) is one requirement that any one of them meets.
None, Basic, Working, Advanced. The level a job needs comes from O*NET’s level rating (0 to 7): under 2.75 is Basic, under 4.5 is Working, higher is Advanced. Tools asked for need Working. The level you choose changes it: entry level needs nothing above Working and nice-to-haves only at Basic; senior needs the must-haves at Advanced and the important ones at least at Working; mid level is the job data as it is.
Your level is the first of these that applies: your own rating; the AI’s reading of your resume (the button, if you press it); then the highest of: a work skill your current job uses (its level); each job on your resume, read as its job in the data (the job’s level after two years in it, one level lower before that, internships included); your degree (its main subject is Working for a bachelor’s and Advanced for a master’s or doctorate, nearby subjects one level lower, an earlier or lower degree one level lower; any degree gives reading, writing and learning skills); the tools your resume names (a tool is Working; Programming and Computers rise with the number of tools named); a line in your resume that shows a work skill (Basic, Working when three or more lines show it). Every estimate says where it came from, and your rating always wins.
| Importance | Weight |
|---|---|
| Must have | 3 |
| Important | 2 |
| Nice to have | 1 |
Readiness has two parts, scored apart: the tools (the software, tools and hard skills the job data or your posts name) and the work skills (work skills and knowledge areas). Each part = the sum of weight × (your level ÷ level needed, at most 1), divided by the sum of the weights. Readiness = the average of the two parts, and the label (Ready to apply from 80%, Close from 60%, Some way to go from 40%, Early days below) follows the weaker part. A part with fewer than two skills counts together with the other, as one list. A skill with no level from any source counts as none until you rate it. A job whose usual preparation is above what your resume shows (O*NET job zone: a master’s degree against your bachelor’s, for example), or a post that asks for a higher degree, is never marked “Ready to apply”: the report says what is missing.
How alike the work is: the cosine similarity between your levels and each job’s levels on the 35 work skills and 33 knowledge areas, each one centered on its average over all 910 jobs (so reading, speaking and critical thinking, which nearly every job needs, do not make a nurse look like a physicist), with a job’s level weighted by how important it is there; plus a share for the job’s tools you already use (85/15, or 75/25 when your resume names three tools or more). Single-line keyword hints stay out of it. Jobs O*NET itself lists as related to your current job or the jobs on your resume come first, marked, when their work is at least 25% like yours; then the rest by how alike the work is plus 0.6 × how alike the job is to the job you want, so the list leads toward your target (“Work much like yours” from 45%). The list shows your level (job zone: from the work you have done, or your degree) up to one above it or up to the level your degree opens; with a degree and no work yet, from one level under the degree up to it. You can choose otherwise. The number on each card is the readiness rule above on that job’s own list. The list needs at least four known levels.
The job’s tools first (most asked for first), then the must-have knowledge and hard skills, then the important ones, then the everyday work skills such as speaking, writing and problem solving, which you practice while you learn the rest, then the nice-to-haves, then four steps to prove it and apply. Inside each group, the heavier skill comes first.
O*NET has no product manager, UX researcher, AI engineer or DevOps engineer. For these titles the tools come from real job posts: we read the posts for the title on the public company job boards our job finder uses, counted how many of the companies name each tool or skill, and keep the ones named by 15% or more of them (must have from half, important from a quarter). Words that name a company’s industry or product (SaaS, fintech) and hiring boilerplate (recruitment, benefits) are left out. The work skills come from the closest O*NET job, named on the report with the reason. The date the posts were read is on every skill.
“About the job” shows US figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, to everyone, marked as US data: the median yearly pay and the range most people earn (OEWS, May 2025), and the change in the number of jobs from 2025 to 2035 with the openings each year (Employment Projections 2025–35, released 27 Aug 2026). When the job data is more detailed than the BLS, the figures are for the wider group, and the page names it. We have no official pay figures for other countries, so we show none.
A starting guess you can change on every step: levels to climb × 15 hours for a tool, 20 for a work skill, 25 for a knowledge area. Steps run one after another at your hours a week; skipped steps drop out. A skill not rated yet counts as missing, so the roadmap shows a range (with and without those skills) until you rate them; past two years it says so in words instead of a far-off date.
Five steps, whatever the job.
It adds up hours per step from the level you have to the level the job needs, at the hours a week you set, so it is honest about the size of the gap. Change the hours or tick off what you already know and the dates move with you.
A step-by-step plan from the job you have to the job you want: which skills to learn, in what order, how long each takes and how to show it. This generator builds it from your own skill gap, so you do not spend weeks on what you already know.
Pick one target job. List what you can already do, with proof. Find the skills the job needs that you lack and put them in order of importance. Give each one an hour estimate, divide by the hours you have each week, and add a project to prove it. The generator does each of these steps from your resume and the job you pick.
Plan for the hours you can keep for months, not your best week, because the dates follow that number. In the worked example on this page, the same bookkeeper-to-accountant roadmap takes 29 to 51 weeks at 5 hours a week, and 15 to 26 weeks at 10.
Yes. Pick the job one step up as the target and set the level to Senior if that is the step. Much of the list will likely match already, so the roadmap tends to be short. Share the PDF with your manager and ask which steps you can practice at work.
The gap analysis tells you what is missing. The roadmap tells you what to do about it, in what order and by when. Here they are one app: the gap report is one tab and the roadmap is the next, so you can move between them.
Yes, with no account and no limit. You can tick steps off, change the hours, add the plan to your calendar and download it. The AI coach has a small free daily allowance per connection.
From the O*NET 31.0 Database of the U.S. Department of Labor (August 2026 release), used under the CC BY 4.0 license. It rates how important each work skill and knowledge area is for 910 jobs, based on surveys of people doing the work, and lists the tools the job uses. The jobs and skills are the same in most countries; add a job post from your own country to see what employers there ask for.
Type your own title and paste one to three real job posts for it: their skills become the list. Or press "List the skills with AI" to get the skills the job usually needs, then check them against a real post. Product manager, UX researcher, AI engineer and DevOps engineer are not in the job data either, so for them the tools come from real job posts we counted, dated on every skill.
Your resume shows the tools and skills you name (we read it in your browser with the same reader as our resume scanner). Your current job fills in the work skills that job uses every day. Everything else you rate yourself: None, Basic, Working or Advanced. Each level shows where it came from, and your rating always wins.
The file is read in your browser, and your plans are saved in this browser, with a delete button and a backup file you can download. The text of your resume, and what you send to the AI, are saved to ClapAssist so our tools can fill them in for you next time; see or delete them at clapassist.com/my-data/. Only the AI buttons send text, and each one says what it sends.
The roadmap adds up hours per step: levels to climb times 15 hours for a tool, 20 for a work skill and 25 for a knowledge area. That is our starting guess, not a promise; change the hours on any step and the dates move. At 6 hours a week, 120 hours is about 20 weeks.
The links go to each site's own search for that skill: YouTube, Coursera and edX (most courses can be audited for free), Khan Academy, Microsoft Learn, freeCodeCamp, MIT OpenCourseWare, OpenStax and Alison; SWAYAM in India, TESDA in the Philippines and OpenLearn in the UK. We have no deal with any of them and earn nothing from the links.
Yes, as US data, on the About the job tab: the median yearly pay and the range most people earn, from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (May 2025), and how the number of jobs is expected to change from 2025 to 2035. We show the US figures to everyone and label them, because pay elsewhere is often very different and we have no official figures for other countries. The same tab links to open jobs for the title in our job finder.
ClapAssist is a Mac and Windows app that listens to the interview and shows you what to say, so your new skills come across when it counts.
Download with 10 free minutesThis page includes information from the O*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license. ClapAssist has modified all or some of this information. USDOL/ETA has not approved, endorsed, or tested these modifications. Learning links go to each site’s own search; we have no deal with any of them.