Comparison

CairnCareers vs Make the Leap.

Make the Leap sells one-time reports. CairnCareers is a subscription that keeps your plan current. Both start free and neither needs a resume. The difference is what the result is built from, and what happens after you read it.

Last checkedSeptember 21, 2026

ByBrooke Houck, PhD

Side by side: Make the Leap and CairnCareers
Feature	Make the Leap	CairnCareers
Built for	Several assessments for different situations. First Leap is the one its FAQ describes as built for students, recent graduates, and anyone early in their career.⁶	College students and recent graduates choosing a first path.
Where the numbers come from	AI configured around frameworks the founder developed through 9+ years of coaching and retreat facilitation, according to its FAQ.⁶ We did not find an outside data source named there.	ONET occupational task data, the Eloundou et al. (2024) exposure framework in Science, and METR's^ capability trend. Every source is named and linked on the methodology page.¹
AI exposure	First Leap results include what its FAQ calls AI-proof scores.⁶ We did not find a published method for how they are measured.	A task-weighted 0 to 100 exposure score per path, with pay and growth data kept separate from it so you can see what moved the result.¹
The plan	A finished report, delivered as a PDF and on a web page. The Career Leap Roadmap adds a 90-day transition outline and a 4-week guided email program.⁶	A term-by-term roadmap that re-sequences as evidence gaps close or your target career changes, plus resume, LinkedIn, network, and interview modules built from the same records.³
What happens next term	The report is yours as written. A new read means a new assessment.	The roadmap updates. A plan written once for a junior is out of date by the following autumn, after new courses, an internship, or a change of mind.
How you start	A free assessment of about 10 minutes.⁶	Leave an email for beta access. No resume or work history needed.
Price	Free assessment, then one-time purchases: First Leap Blueprint at US$19, Career Brief at US$29, Career Leap Roadmap at US$79.⁶	Free tier. Pro at US$6 a month. Premium at US$11 a month.²

When Make the Leap is the better fit

You feel lost and want a one-time read on what is holding you back, more than a score for specific paths.
You would rather pay once and own a finished report than subscribe.

When CairnCareers is the better fit

You are weighing specific career paths and want an AI-exposure score you can trace to its sources.
You want a plan that follows the academic calendar and changes as you do.
You want the number on your resume to be one you can back up.

Is a one-time report or a subscription better for a student?

A one-time report costs less if one read is all you need. First Leap Blueprint is US$19 once.⁶ Pro is US$6 a month, so it costs more than the Blueprint from the fourth month on.²

A subscription earns its cost when the plan has to change. Between one autumn and the next, a student adds courses, maybe an internship, and sometimes a new target career. A report written before those changes stays as written; the roadmap re-sequences around them.³

How is the AI-exposure score calculated?

It averages how exposed each task in an occupation is to current AI, weighted by how much of the work each task takes up, and puts the result on a 0 to 100 scale.¹ The tasks come from O*NET. Each one gets an exposure value from the Eloundou et al. (2024) framework: 0 if today's AI cannot meaningfully do it, 0.5 if AI can do it with the right tools, and 1.0 if AI can do it on its own.¹

A worked example: half of an occupation's work is a task AI can do on its own, a quarter is a task AI can do with tools, and a quarter is a task AI cannot touch. That gives (0.5 x 1.0) + (0.25 x 0.5) + (0.25 x 0) = 0.625, or about 63 out of 100.¹

What happens to the plan after a term?

It updates. When you answer a prompt, the step behind it can drop off, and when you change your target career, the whole sequence rebuilds around the new one.³

In the sample roadmap, December ends with a check against a coverage target of 85 out of 100 for the target role, and anything still open moves into spring.³

What does each one cost over a year?

Make the Leap's assessment is free, and its reports are one-time purchases: First Leap Blueprint at US$19, Career Brief at US$29, and Career Leap Roadmap at US$79.⁶ CairnCareers has a free tier, and its paid plans are monthly: Pro at US$6 and Premium at US$11.²

Billed monthly for twelve months, Pro comes to US$72 and Premium to US$132.² A year of Pro costs less than the Career Leap Roadmap, and a year of Premium costs more. Beta users get CairnCareers free for the first year after launch.² Price alone does not settle it: one buys a report fixed on the day you read it, the other a plan that keeps re-sequencing through the year. If one read is all you need, the one-time report is the cheaper choice.

What is the difference between an AI-proof label and an exposure score?

A label sorts a career into safe or not safe. An exposure score says how much of the work current AI can do, on a 0 to 100 scale, with each task weighted by how much of the work it takes up.¹ Make the Leap's FAQ says First Leap results include AI-proof scores; we did not find a published method for how they are measured.⁶

The difference shows in what you do next. A score of about 63, like the worked example above, does not say the job is finished. It says a large share of the weighted work is exposed to current AI, and the task map beside it shows which tasks are durable, so you know where to aim.¹ The methodology also says what the score is not: a prediction that the job will disappear, or a judgment about you.¹

What do you enter once, and where does it show up?

One record for each thing you did. On the evidence page, each answered prompt raises your coverage for the target role, writes a resume bullet, and writes a LinkedIn line at the same time, and the interview page drafts answers from the same records.

Take the coffee shop survey from the home page. Entered once, it becomes a resume bullet: designed and ran a customer survey for a local business and presented pricing recommendations to the owner. The same record feeds the LinkedIn experience block and an interview answer, so you write it once and it is reused wherever it belongs.

Which should you start with if you are not sure what you want?

If you have no career paths in mind yet, a broad first read such as Make the Leap's free assessment, about 10 minutes, may be the better place to start.⁶

CairnCareers starts from the paths you are weighing and the work you have already done.¹ Once you have two or three paths in mind, even loosely, it can score each one for AI exposure, show pay and growth beside the score, and build the roadmap toward the one you pick. The two can run in that order: one to find the direction, the other to test it and plan toward it.

Request beta access See a sample dashboard first

Sources

Statements about Make the Leap describe its public pages on the date checked and may have changed since, so if something here is out of date, tell us and we will correct it.

* This projection uses METR's established long-run time-horizon trend, not the faster 2026 estimates. Those newer figures come from a task suite near saturation, carry very wide confidence intervals, and measure software tasks specifically, so extrapolating them across all occupations is not yet reliable. See MIT Technology Review, "This is the most misunderstood graph in AI," February 5, 2026, https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/02/05/1132254/this-is-the-most-misunderstood-graph-in-ai/