The Entry-Level Job Isn't Dying. It Has to Become an Apprenticeship.

On October 4, 2026, 60 Minutes examined AI and the future of work, and one theme stood out for anyone who hires young people.

Ask any seasoned leader how they learned to do their job well, and you will rarely hear about a training program. You will hear about the drafts. The memo a manager covered in red ink. The analysis sent back three times. The presentation torn apart the night before the big meeting.

That is the work AI is absorbing first. In the segment, Clara Shih, who led major AI divisions at Salesforce and then Meta, explained that the tasks traditionally handed to young professionals, research and first drafts, are exactly what AI now does well. She has watched work that once took dozens of people get done by one, two or three people working with AI agents. Concerned about what that meant for young workers, she left that world to start a nonprofit that helps them navigate the change.

The report noted that the early pain is landing on people in their twenties, as hiring slows in the jobs most exposed to AI. In my commentary on the segment, AI Can Learn Your Expertise. It Can't Learn Who You Are., I argued that the real casualty is the first rung, the place where young people earn their judgment. This essay is about how leaders can rebuild it.

The Draft Was Never the Point

Organizations hired junior people to produce first drafts because someone had to. The real value was never the draft. It was the person who emerged after a few hundred of them: someone who could spot the flaw in an argument, sense what a client needed and know when the numbers did not add up.

When AI produces the draft, the work still gets done. The learning does not, unless leaders redesign it on purpose.

So I don't see the entry-level job disappearing. I see it changing shape, into an apprenticeship.

What an AI-Era Apprenticeship Looks Like

An apprenticeship is a job designed around growth, and most organizations can start building one this quarter.

Flip the order of the work. Let AI produce the first pass, and make the early-career professional responsible for the second: checking the facts, finding what is missing and defending the recommendation. Critique builds judgment faster than production ever did.

Make the reasoning visible. In every review, ask the young person to explain why they changed what they changed. Once they can put their thinking into words, you can coach it.

Pair them with a person, not just a tool. AI can answer questions. It cannot notice that someone is discouraged, or point out a strength they cannot see in themselves. Give every early-career hire a senior colleague who is accountable for their growth, not just their output.

Give them a real stake early. Small projects with genuine responsibility and a visible result build more conviction than months of supporting someone else's work. People learn to act on what they believe by being trusted to do it.

Measure learning alongside throughput. If a team becomes more productive with AI, add a second question to every performance conversation: what can this person do now that they could not do six months ago?

Why This Is a Leadership Decision

It would be easier to simply stop hiring at the entry level, and some organizations will. But a company that stops developing young people is borrowing against its own future. In ten years it will need experienced leaders who were never given the chance to become experienced. The judgment that makes a senior professional valuable, the kind an AI persona might one day imitate, exists only because someone once invested in that person's early reps.

The people who will lead in that future are deciding right now whether they are wanted. As I wrote in Confidence Is Leaving Through the Entry Level, early-career workers are already less optimistic than their senior colleagues. An apprenticeship model sends the opposite message: we are investing in who you are becoming, not only in what you can produce today.

Shih's advice to leaders was to be honest with people about the risks. Young professionals deserve that honesty too. Tell them AI will take on much of the work their predecessors did. Then show them what you are building in its place.

Start With One Team

You do not need a company-wide program to begin. Pick one team that hires early-career people. Redesign one workflow so AI does the first pass and the junior person owns the review. Assign one senior sponsor. After 90 days, sit down together and talk about what the person learned.

If it works, you will have something more valuable than an efficiency gain. You will have proof that your organization still knows how to grow its own leaders.

The first rung can be rebuilt, and the organizations that rebuild it first will have the deepest bench when the next generation of leadership is needed.

Want to explore these ideas further? Learn more about my work on leadership, identity and conviction at www.theglennllopis.com.