Dive Brief:
- HR leaders believe AI will allow them to create new entry-level roles for junior employees, with 94% saying they expect that will happen within the next five years, according to a joint study from Cognizant and Pearson.
- In addition, 96% of HR leaders said entry-level roles will “evolve into positions where employees supervise or manage AI” within five years as these early career positions pivot away from carrying out basic tasks and toward collaborating with AI systems, per the report.
- Meanwhile, more than 90% of the HR professionals surveyed said that reshaping entry-level positions was up to middle managers, who are “instrumental to redefining job roles as AI changes the day-to-day work of team members.”
Dive Insight:
The report surveyed 750 HR leaders in the U.S., the U.K. and India earlier this year, and found companies not only need more AI-ready workers, but lack the developmental resources to keep pace with demand.
Although 91% of respondents said workers have upped their requests for AI training over the past year, 46% of companies don’t provide that training. Another 60% of HR pros said their organization’s learning and development programs were too slow to keep up with the speed at which AI was moving.
“AI is reshaping the talent landscape and exposing the limits of traditional talent and learning models,” Kathy Diaz, chief people officer at Cognizant, said in a statement. “With the fundamental shift in entry-level tasks and skill requirements changing rapidly, organizations must rethink how they hire and develop talent at pace.”
Employees and candidates with “broad, interdisciplinary backgrounds” are better suited to new AI-focused entry level roles than people with specific degrees or narrow skill sets, according to 69% of respondents. Another two-thirds (67%) said they find liberal arts degrees more valuable than they used to, and 97% said soft skills were especially important because they demonstrated “adaptability, problem-solving, and human judgment.”
“As work evolves, the most successful organizations will focus less on replacing tasks and more on building the capabilities that help humans and AI work together,” Ali Bebo, CHRO at Pearson, said in a statement. “That starts with early-career talent. The future belongs to organizations that combine AI innovation with a deep understanding of how people learn, develop, and apply new skills in the real world.”
These workforce shifts may rely on a strong management layer; notably, a 2025 report from workforce communication platform Firstup found that recent reductions in middle management have made communication, productivity and employee engagement more challenging.
At the same time, companies expect increased productivity from entry-level workers, with almost half of U.S.-based HR professionals in a recent survey saying that AI is putting pressure on early career workers even when staffing levels are static.
