AI Academy/Where else to learn AI
Where Else Can Recruiters Learn AI? Free Courses, Assistant Training and the Law
The best free places for recruiters to learn AI outside the Academy: foundations courses, free training from Anthropic, OpenAI, Microsoft and Google, recruiter specific courses, prompting guides and the official hiring law pages. Every link checked October 2026.
The short answer
The best free places to learn AI outside this Academy are a plain English foundations course such as Elements of AI, the free courses from the company behind the assistant you use (Claude Academy, OpenAI Academy, Microsoft Learn or Google’s Gemini guide), and the official pages for the hiring laws where you recruit.
Recruiter specific training mostly sits behind a subscription. LinkedIn Learning has the strongest recruiting paths, and Workology runs a free five day prompt course for HR and recruiting.
Every course below was opened and checked in October 2026. Prices and access are what each provider’s own page said on that date, so check before you sign up. We are not paid for any of these listings.
Where should a complete beginner start?
Start with one short course that explains what AI is and is not, then come back to Module 1 of the Academy for the recruiting side.
| Course | From | Cost | What a recruiter gets from it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Elements of AI | University of Helsinki and MinnaLearn | Free | Six self paced chapters on what AI can and cannot do, with no maths or coding. |
| Make America AI-Ready | U.S. Department of Labor | Free | A one week course sent by text message, about ten minutes a day, covering basics, prompting and checking answers. |
| Get started with AI | Microsoft Learn | Free | One short beginner module on AI terms and good prompting habits. |
| AI For Everyone | DeepLearning.AI | Lessons free to watch; certificate $49 | About seven hours of video from Andrew Ng on how AI projects work, useful when clients ask what AI can really do. |
| AI and Career Empowerment | University of Maryland Smith School of Business | Free, with a free certificate | A business focused online course for working professionals building AI skills. |
| Google AI Essentials | Google, through Coursera | 7 day free trial, then $49 a month in the US | Under five hours of hands on practice drafting, researching and brainstorming with AI, ending in a Google certificate. |
Where can you learn the assistant you already use?
The companies that make the assistants run free training. Take the one for the assistant your company pays for, because a business plan is the one you should be using with candidate data (Module 4, Lesson 5 explains why).
| Course | For | Cost | What a recruiter gets from it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude 101 | Claude | Free | Everyday Claude at work: projects, connecting tools, research and use cases by role, with a certificate. |
| AI Fluency: Framework and Foundations | Any assistant | Free | Anthropic’s course on when to hand a task to AI, how to describe it and how to judge the result. |
| Claude Academy | Claude | Free | The full set of Anthropic’s courses and tutorials for people using Claude at work. |
| OpenAI Academy | ChatGPT | Free | ChatGPT tracks for office workers plus free live sessions on practical workplace use. |
| Gemini for Workspace prompting guide | Gemini | Free PDF | Ready made prompts for Gmail, Docs and Sheets, including a human resources section to adapt. |
| Draft, analyze and present with Microsoft Copilot | Microsoft Copilot | Free training; practice needs a Copilot license | Six modules on Copilot in Outlook, Word, Excel and Teams, from inbox triage to drafting. |
Our own lessons on ChatGPT, Claude and Grok and on Copilot and Gemini compare what each one does for a recruiter and which plan you need.
Is there AI training built for recruiters?
Yes, but most of it is paid. These are the options worth your time.
| Course | From | Cost | What a recruiter gets from it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Become an AI-Powered Recruiter | LinkedIn Learning | Subscription; LinkedIn offers a free first month | Five courses, about four and a half hours, including generative AI in recruiting and talent acquisition. |
| Generative AI for Recruiting Professional Certificate | LinkedIn Learning | Subscription | Six courses and a final exam covering AI across the hiring process, ethics and LinkedIn’s Hiring Assistant. |
| AI Prompt Writing for HR and Recruiting | Workology | Free | Five days of email lessons on writing prompts for ChatGPT, Copilot and Gemini in HR and recruiting work. |
| AI in the Workplace hub | SHRM | Hub free to read; weekly webinars and templates for members | HR focused AI research, policy templates and a weekly live session on AI at work. |
| Recruiting Brainfood | Hung Lee | Free newsletter | A weekly hand picked roundup of recruiting reading, much of it now about AI tools and practice. |
| SocialTalent TA Academies | SocialTalent | Paid, from €1,095 per licence a year for 8 or more licences | Team training for recruiters, including AI skills. Best for agencies training a whole desk at once. |
Where can you get better at prompting?
Module 1, Lesson 4 and our prompt library cover recruiting prompts. For the general skill, these three are free and written by people who know the models.
| Guide | From | Cost | What a recruiter gets from it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prompt Engineering Guide | Learn Prompting | Free guide; paid courses also offered | A written guide for non technical readers, starting from everyday tasks such as drafting emails. |
| Prompt engineering best practices for ChatGPT | OpenAI | Free | A short official primer on clear, specific prompts and improving them over a few rounds. |
| Prompting best practices | Anthropic | Free | Anthropic’s reference on instructions, examples and structure. More detailed, and useful once the basics click. |
Where can you read the hiring laws for yourself?
Module 4, Lesson 3 maps which rules apply to you. When you need the source, these are the official pages. None of this is legal advice.
| Source | From | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Local Law 144 | NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection | Bias audits and candidate notice for automated hiring tools used on New York City jobs, with an FAQ. |
| SB 26-189 | Colorado General Assembly | The 2026 law that replaced Colorado’s 2024 AI Act: notice, an explanation after an adverse decision and human review, from January 1, 2027. Enforcement is on hold under a federal court order for now. |
| Public Act 103-0804 | Illinois General Assembly | Makes discriminatory AI use in recruiting and hiring a civil rights violation, bans zip codes as a proxy and requires notice. |
| AI Video Interview Act | Illinois General Assembly | Notice, explanation and consent before AI analyses a recorded video interview, and deletion on request. |
| AI Risk Management Framework | NIST | A voluntary US framework for judging AI risk, handy when you write questions for a vendor. |
| EU AI Act explorer | Future of Life Institute | A readable version of the EU AI Act, which treats CV screening and ranking tools as high risk. |
| AI and data protection | UK Information Commissioner’s Office | UK guidance on fairness, transparency and automated decisions when AI processes candidate data. |
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission no longer has a page of AI hiring guidance online, so we do not link one. Federal anti discrimination law still applies to any tool you use.
What about training for your ATS and sourcing tools?
Most recruiting software companies run their own free training for customers, and many give a certificate you can add to LinkedIn. We list the official ones for Bullhorn, Greenhouse, LinkedIn Recruiter, hireEZ, Apollo and dozens more on training academies for recruiting tools.
In what order should you learn?
- One foundations course and Module 1. A few hours on what the models do and where they go wrong saves you from trusting a confident wrong answer later.
- The course for the assistant you pay for. Learn the one your company has approved, not the one in the news this week.
- Your own tools’ academies. An hour in your ATS or sourcing tool’s training usually turns up AI features you already pay for and have never switched on.
- The law where you hire. Read Module 4, then the official page for each city or state you recruit in.
- Check yourself. Every Academy module ends with a short quiz. Take it before you move on.
Quick answers
What is the best free AI course for recruiters?
For the basics, Elements of AI. For recruiting itself, the free choice is Workology’s five day prompt course, and the AI Recruiting Academy you are reading now.
Are LinkedIn Learning’s recruiter AI courses free?
No. They need a LinkedIn Learning subscription, though LinkedIn offers a free first month you can use to finish a path.
Do I need a certificate to use AI as a recruiter?
Few employers ask for one. A certificate from your ATS vendor or LinkedIn can help on a profile, but what counts is showing better results on real reqs.
Why are some well known courses missing?
We list a course only after opening its page and confirming the price and access. Courses we could not confirm, or that are paid with no trial, are left out. The date at the top shows our last check.
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