AI, automation and the future talent pipeline: Are firms

Most modern workplaces are embedding AI and automation into almost every part of their workings. These technologies improve efficiency, lower costs and offer improved service.

At the same time, there’s a shift emerging in hiring strategies. Junior roles are being re-evaluated, and in some cases replaced by technology that can take on traditionally entry-level tasks. Graduate schemes are shrinking, and the number of young people not in education, employment or training is rising.

In isolation these decisions can be justified, but when you look at the bigger picture it raises a concern around the development of future talent, experience and leadership.

Is focusing on short term efficiencies risking a future skills gap?

AI vs Automation

AI and Automation are often used interchangeably. In many firms AI has become shorthand for anything technical, but they solve different problems, and impact talent and hiring patterns in very different ways.

Automation helps remove repetitive tasks, creating workflows that follow predefined rules. It’s helpful for tasks such as invoice processing, data entry and approval processes.

AI can analyse, predict and generate helping to draft reports, conduct research, screen candidates and analyse data. For some firms AI is embedded at every touch point, in every piece of software and in every role.

In short, automation removes the repetitive, but AI has the capability of removing learning opportunities that have traditionally helped people gain experience.

As firms continue to invest in AI, the question shifts from whether technology can cope with the tasks, instead it’s about what the knock-on is on the people, the jobs and the future talent pipeline.

Removing the bottom rung of the ladder

Everybody must start their career somewhere. Whether they’ve been to university, completed an apprenticeship or networked their way into a job, there has to be a starting point.

Increasingly, businesses are asking their junior hires to arrive experienced and ready to go. They’re looking for candidates with 2+ years of experience to enable them to hit the ground running.

Experience isn’t a box you can tick, it’s created through exposure to different types and levels of work. The demand for experience from the outset prompts the eternal question of how do you gain experience if no-one is willing to hire without it?

AI and automation risk accelerating this trend. As technology takes over the typically junior-level responsibilities, some organisations are re-examining their junior hiring strategies.

The number of graduate positions fell by 33%in 2025, taking it to the lowest level since 2018. The decline of those schemes is indicative of the overall labour market, in March 2026 there were 1,012,000 young people not in education, employment or training, and that number is only expected to rise.

All of those points raise the question: if graduate recruitment is falling today, what does that mean for manager roles in 2030?

Junior positions are becoming increasingly rare, prohibiting young people from entering the workforce. PWC UK reduced their graduate intake by 200 in late 2025, with EY cutting its graduate hiring by 11%.

Viewed individually these decisions make commercial sense, with the cost of hiring increasing and a lack of confidence in the market, but it’s not one or two isolated cases, it’s systemic across the professional services industry. Prompting the question of how future pipelines will be developed.

Every experienced professional started as an inexperienced one. If firms remove too many junior roles, they are simply shrinking the future talent pool for experienced hires.

AI doesn’t create experience. We learn through making mistakes, coaching, exposure and repetition. Removing junior hires doesn’t just lose that talent, it loses the process through which we learn.

Using AI screening in recruitment

For those firms that do continue to recruit junior talent, the volume of applications has led many to rely on AI tools to screen candidates before a human ever reviews an application.

The risk is that, in removing the human from the initial sift, firms also remove their ability to recognise potential that doesn't fit a predefined pattern.

Every recruiter has at some point come across the candidate who looked average on paper but impressed from the moment they walked into the interview. Perhaps there was a compelling reason for a gap in their CV, a missed grade, or an unconventional career path. Those are the candidates who often turn out to be exceptional.

Would many of today's successful entrepreneurs have passed an AI-driven screening process early in their careers?

There is also a broader concern. If AI is trained to identify candidates who match historical hiring patterns, does it risk producing a workforce of increasingly similar trainees? Diversity of thought, background and experience is often born from those who don't tick every box.

And as AI screening becomes more common, candidates will inevitably learn how to optimise for it. CVs and applications will increasingly be written to satisfy algorithms rather than to reflect the person behind them.

The question then becomes: are firms identifying the best people, or simply those who have become best at passing the AI filter?

Sacrificing tomorrow’s capability for today’s efficiencies

On paper, reducing the number of junior hires and replacing them with AI efficiencies might seem like a sensible decision, but talent pipelines don’t operate on an annual planning cycle.

When the number of junior roles is reduced, it doesn’t just impact those individuals. With fewer people gaining basic experience you’re slimming down your future talent pool and compressing the base layer of your talent pyramid.

Over time that impacts the upper tiers, narrowing the available pool of people for mid-level and leadership roles. As firms look to hire at the next level there are fewer options, leading to artificially inflated salaries as firms compete to secure candidates.

Those natural development pathways that take someone from an inexperienced junior role through to leadership are lost, discarded due to lack of uptake. A skill and knowledge gap emerges that will cast a shadow as time progresses. Planning based on short term economic and technological factors limits tomorrow’s opportunities and progress.

If we remove the entry point, where do we expect to find tomorrow’s experienced talent?

Focusing on the wrong problem

The most common assumption about AI is that it reduces the need for junior roles. It should change what those roles do, but I’d like to challenge you to think about it in a different way.

Replace junior work with routine work.

AI can do routine work which frees junior hires up to develop client relationships, learn high-value skills, build their commercial awareness and begin to contribute strategically far earlier in their careers than most of us were able to.

It’s not about replacing junior hires, without junior hires you’ll struggle to find mid-hires with the right experience. It’s about redesigning the roles themselves so that AI removes the low-value tasks without removing the roles themselves.

When AI is seen as an enabler rather than a replacement, junior roles become more valuable, and the result is faster development and stronger capability for all.

Redesigning roles

I’m not anti-AI by any stretch. AI can be truly transformative for firms, and we should be looking to embed it in our systems, but only if we’re also looking at how we can use our employees in an equally transformative way.

Junior roles are traditionally admin heavy, packed with repetitive tasks and, let’s be honest, not always the most inspiring. AI can change that.

When we train our junior hires on how to use it and set them up for success we can widen their role to include AI-assisted analysis, problem solving, strategic thinking alongside building those human-to-human relationships with clients.

Not only are those roles more interesting for that person because they accelerate their learning and development but they’re also far more valuable to the firm. Those individuals build skills faster, progress quicker and have exposure to more complex work earlier in their careers.

Reshaping their roles doesn’t only prevent a gap in the career ladder, it brings those rungs closer together, making it easier to climb.

However fast technology progresses, we’re going to need human skills, human relationships and humans, full stop. Whether it’s exerting judgement or influence, communicating, strategy, relationships or inspiring others. Humans will always be needed, which means organisations must ensure their use of technology doesn’t jeopardise their future talent pipeline.

There’s no denying the business case for AI and automation, the benefits speak for themselves. The risk in using them doesn’t come from the tools themselves, but rather how the talent system is being reshaped around them.

Junior roles are worth more than the base line tasks they’re assigned.

Junior roles are the place where experience begins, judgement is developed and future leaders are formed. If those starting points are removed without being redesigned or reassigned, firms may find themselves weakening their future workforce and leadership.

The challenge for firms becomes how to blend new technologies with pipeline strategy to ensure talent can be developed across all levels. In the long run, competitive advantage won’t come from how AI is used in your firm, it’ll be about who is able to develop its people in the right way.

About Nicky Acuña Ocaña

With over 25 years of experience leading high‑performing recruitment teams, Nicky Acuña Ocaña is a dynamic leader in the recruitment industry. As President, Americas, UK and Europe at Ambition, she oversees specialist teams connecting top talent with professional services firms.

Ambition US specialises in Legal Marketing and Business Development recruitment across the United States. Through our international network of offices, we also support legal BD and Marketing hiring across key markets in the UK, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Australia.

The Ambition UK and Europe teams specialise in Business Services recruitment across Finance & Accounting, Business Development, and Marketing & Communications within the legal, professional services, and consultancy sectors. We also recruit across practice areas including Audit, Insolvency & Restructuring, Tax, and Corporate Finance.

A passionate advocate for Allyship, Belonging and Inclusion, Nicky is a sought‑after keynote speaker and regular contributor to industry conversations on leadership, hiring, retention, and inclusive cultures.

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