With AI taking on many of the tasks traditionally performed by early-career employees, employers are being forced to reconsider what an entry-level role is actually designed to do.

A lot of professionals remember the early days of their careers as a mix of tasks such as research, administration, drafting and coordination.

They may not have been the most glamorous parts of a job, but they often provided opportunities to learn how an organisation worked and improve professional judgement.

AI is changing what those early career days look like.

There has been plenty of noise about AI ‘killing’ the entry-level role, but research suggests the picture is more nuanced. AHRI research from 2025 found that 41 per cent of employers say entry-level roles are actually increasing due to AI, compared with just 19 per cent who saw a decrease.

“Some entry-level roles have been abolished, but we’re also seeing really different roles [emerge], which allow people to do more valuable work early on,” says Tanya Hammond FCPHR, CEO and Chief Collaborator at Tailored HR Solutions.

The biggest threat to entry-level employment may not be AI itself, she says, but a lack of intentional job design that allows junior employees to build the judgement and expertise needed to work effectively alongside it.

Hammond will be speaking on this topic alongside Jaye Matheson, Chief insights and Transformation Officer at Tailored HR Solutions, at an upcoming AHRI webinar on rethinking and rebuilding the entry-level role.

Below, Hammond and Matheson explore what employers may need to rethink as AI changes the early-career learning experience.

Developing judgement in the AI era

There are clear benefits to removing low-value work from an entry-level role, says Hammond. Few people would argue that graduates need to spend their first year photocopying documents or making coffee before they can contribute meaningfully.

However, employers still need to recreate the learning that used to happen through those everyday tasks.

One of the most important of those capabilities is judgement grounded in organisational context – particularly as concerns grow that over-reliance on AI could weaken critical thinking.

“We’ve got to be really careful and intentional about building that judgement. It’s now an important part of managers’ role to help their new employees make good judgement calls,” says Hammond.

Matheson compares this to the challenges faced by employees who entered the workforce during the pandemic lockdown periods. Without opportunities for interpersonal connection arising organically, managers had to learn how to find intentional ways to create moments of connection.

“Regardless of the role, or the extent to which tasks are being augmented or automated, we need to [give entry-level employees] the knowledge, capability and experience to make sure they’re using tools appropriately, exercising judgement, making good decisions, and delivering quality outcomes.” – Jaye Matheson, Chief insights and Transformation Officer at Tailored HR Solutions

“That’s also what we need to do here – ensure managers have the experience, capability and confidence to build that judgement [in entry-level employees].”

For example, rather than simply checking whether a piece of work looks right, managers may need to help employees understand why it is right, where they might have missed the mark and how that specific task applies to the organisation’s particular context.

Another coaching technique managers could apply is helping employees to arrive at insight rather than simply relaying information. This is the difference between adding data to a report and feeling confident to speak to the relevant insights a report is indicating. Managers need to help their teams to show their thinking, rather than only being concerned with the outcome.

According to Matheson, HR needs to give early-career employees opportunities to define problems, collaborate with the right people and work out what a solution looks like, rather than simply producing an answer.

“Regardless of the role, or the extent to which tasks are being augmented or automated, we need to [give entry-level employees] the knowledge, capability and experience to make sure they’re using tools appropriately, exercising judgement, making good decisions, and delivering quality outcomes,” she says.

That can be built into feedback loops, she adds, where employees have an opportunity to attempt a task, test their reasoning, receive feedback and try again.

Hear more from Tanya Hammond FCPHR and Jaye Matheson about how AI is reshaping entry-level work at this webinar on 29 September.

Designing better entry-level roles

For employers, deciding what to automate is not as straightforward as identifying the tasks AI can do.

“We might automate things because it seems like it’s going to be more productive and more efficient at the time,” says Hammond. “But if that capability is then eroded, [it might be] that in three-to-five years time, we don’t have a critical capability that we need to deliver. That’s a huge risk. We’ve got to be intentional about what we are automating.”

That means starting with the organisation’s purpose and where it needs to be heading, rather than with the technology itself, she says.

“Every organisation has a purpose, and there are certain capabilities we need to deliver on that purpose,” says Hammond.

From there, HR can help managers to deconstruct roles into their component tasks and consider which elements should be automated or augmented, and which build critical capability.

Hammond points to IKEA as an organisation that has put this into practice. After its AI chatbot took on routine customer enquiries, the retailer reskilled 8500 call-centre employees for work including remote interior design, digital sales and customer problem-solving.

“From their perspective, the introduction of AI [allowed them] to get away from the busywork and to the higher-value work,” she says.

However, one challenge is that the capabilities an organisation needs are unlikely to stand still as AI evolves.

As well as continually reviewing how work is changing, Matheson says HR has a critical role in connecting external trends with the organisation’s internal context and working with leaders to make purposeful decisions about workforce capability and the design of meaningful career pathways.

“There’s some great data from Jobs and Skills Australia and others that provides insights on the occupations, to what extent they’re going to be automated, to what extent they’re going to be augmented, and the strategic skills and capabilities that we need to redesign,” she says. “Those are the capabilities we need to make sure we’re stable on.”

HR should also embrace and advocate for strategic scenario planning in their organisation, she says – thinking not just about what is happening now, but which possible futures the organisation wants to move towards and which workforce segments will be affected.

“We might automate things because it seems like it’s going to be more productive and more efficient at the time. But if that capability is then eroded, [it might be] that in three-to-five years time, we don’t have a critical capability that we need to deliver. That’s a huge risk. So we’ve got to be intentional about what we are automating.” – Tanya Hammond FCPHR, CEO and Chief Collaborator at Tailored HR Solutions

Rethinking the entry-level talent pipeline

These decisions have implications well beyond today’s entry-level employees. They also shape the workforce an organisation will have five or 10 years from now.

“We may need to think differently about how we’re building entry-level pathways to create awareness in opportunities and occupations,” says Matheson.

That might mean widening the talent pool, she says, with employers working more closely with universities, schools and other education providers to create clearer pathways into emerging occupations.

The aim is not simply to create more entry-level jobs, but to create pathways through which people can build the organisational knowledge and expertise that the business will need in future.

The organisations navigating this workforce planning shift will not necessarily be those that move fastest to automate, says Hammond.

“Slow down to speed up,” she says. “We need to step back and think about what we need to be really good at doing, and ensure we prioritise building those capabilities and the culture we need now and for the future.”

🧰 HR’s career resource toolkit

• Webinar: Hear more from Tanya Hammond FCPHR and Jaye Matheson about how AI is reshaping entry-level work at this webinar on 29 September.
• Learning: Gain clarity and stay ahead of AI-driven change with AHRI’s AI & HR: What You Need to Know to Stay Compliant course.
• Infographic: How are HR practitioners feeling about AI?
• Article: 6 things HR needs to know to prepare for the Generation Alpha workforce
• Podcast: How to redesign work in the age of AI with Professor Sandra Parker