OPINION | Automation vs opportunity: Rethinking the future of early careers

If organisations hire fewer fresh graduates today, who will fill their experienced roles five years from now?

As businesses automate more routine work, this question deserves greater attention. Tasks such as preparing reports, collating data, conducting preliminary research, and coordinating processes are increasingly being handled by AI-enabled systems. For employers, reducing the number of entry-level positions may seem like a straightforward way to improve productivity.

Yet these roles have traditionally served another purpose. They introduce young professionals to how organisations operate and give them the experience needed to take on more complex responsibilities. When companies reduce entry-level opportunities, they also need to consider how the next generation of leadership will be developed.

Everyone starts somewhere. Where will they start now?

A graduate joining an HR team might initially be assigned recruitment coordination, candidate documentation, or interview scheduling. Over time, that person begins to understand how hiring decisions are made, what managers look for in candidates, and where the recruitment process can become ineffective or exclusionary.

Similarly, a junior analyst learns more than how to prepare a report. They observe how senior colleagues interpret information, question assumptions, and use evidence to make business decisions.

These everyday responsibilities provide an introduction to professional life and complex decision-making. Employees learn by doing the work, watching others, and receiving feedback. Much of this learning happens informally, without appearing in a training calendar.

AI can now complete several of these activities. The question for employers is whether they have considered how young employees will develop the understanding that came from performing them.

AI can do the first draft. Who teaches the fresher what comes next?

Automation does not automatically exclude young learners but can create evolved possibilities for early-career talent. Graduates can use AI to analyse larger volumes of information faster, explore patterns, and contribute to projects that may previously have required more time or specialised resources. This helps build ownership and accountability faster.

Consider a young HR professional examining employee attrition. An AI system will help identify departments with unusually high turnover and highlight patterns in employee feedback. The professional's contribution lies in investigating what those patterns mean, speaking to relevant stakeholders, and helping the organisation understand what needs to be done to address the attrition.

This can make early-career work more substantive. However, it requires employees to understand the context behind the information they are handling. A person who has never learnt how a business function operates may struggle to recognise when an AI-generated recommendation is incomplete or inappropriate.

Young employees need opportunities to develop that understanding. Managers must make time for explanation, review, and guided responsibility rather than expecting technology to fill every gap in experience.

Today's hiring shortcut could become tomorrow's leadership crisis

Organisations regularly discuss succession planning, leadership development, and the need for specialised skills. These conversations often focus on identifying employees who are ready to move into senior positions.

But where does that talent come from?

Today's graduates may become tomorrow's functional experts, HR business partners, project managers, and business leaders. Their development requires exposure to different responsibilities and organisational challenges.

If companies reduce graduate hiring without creating alternative routes into the workforce, they could run a heightened risk of having a weak leadership pipeline, reliance on external recruitment at senior levels, and a high trust deficit with existing employees. These come with invisible costs, longer hiring cycles, greater competition for people with the required expertise, and lower engagement levels.

You can't automate a manager's responsibility to mentor

The redesign of early careers will require deliberate management. If AI handles research and documentation, young employees can be given opportunities to interpret findings, participate in stakeholder discussions, and manage defined parts of projects.

Internship programmes can include cross-functional assignments, structured mentorship, and exposure to business decisions. Managers should also give employees opportunities to make decisions within clear boundaries and learn from the outcomes.

This calls for a closer connection between workforce planning, learning and development, talent management, internal mobility, and succession planning. Organisations need to understand which capabilities they will require in the coming years and identify how employees at different career stages can develop them.

The first few years of employment will undoubtedly look different as automation becomes more embedded in everyday work. For young professionals, this could mean earlier access to meaningful assignments and more opportunities to contribute to business decisions.

For employers, the responsibility is to ensure that efficiency gains do not come at the expense of developing future talent. The people organisations will need to lead teams, manage complexity, and make difficult decisions five years from now are entering the workforce today. The opportunities they receive now will shape the experience they bring to those roles.

(The author is Founder & Managing Partner, Marching Sheep)

(The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of THE WEEK.)