How Clear Career Paths Keep Early-Career Employees Engaged As AI Reshapes Entry-Level Work
Younger employees want to see that the employer has a vision for them personally, and that they can develop their career with that employer. If they don't see that, they're not as enthusiastic, or they're out.
Jarlath O'Carroll
Founder & CEO
Jobspeaker.ai
AI tools are advancing faster than most organizations can absorb them, and early-career employees are carrying much of the uncertainty. Workers aged 26 to 30 are the least satisfied age group in BambooHR’s 2026 Employee Happiness Report, with an eNPS of 31. Their score trails employees aged 51 to 60 by 17 points. Younger workers have also seen only a moderate recovery in happiness while older colleagues made strong gains. Growing companies that want to keep early-career talent need a clearer answer about where those roles are headed.
Jarlath O’Carroll is Founder and CEO of Jobspeaker.ai, an AI skills-based platform that connects learners, educators, workforce agencies, and employers from K-12 through a working career. He founded the company in 2015 after more than two decades in product, technology, and change management roles. At Wells Fargo, he helped launch one of the first online banking systems in the US and led product management for the Wachovia merger. He also ran large public sector change programs for Deloitte Consulting and launched Charles Schwab’s first online brokerage system in the UK.
“Younger employees are looking for more direction from their employer. They want to see that the employer has a vision for them personally, and that they can develop their career with that employer. If they don’t see that, they’re not as enthusiastic, or they’re out,” says O’Carroll. He places that responsibility on employers, especially as AI changes what early-career work looks like. Employees need guidance on developing their careers and on adopting the AI tools their jobs now depend on.
Adoption without mandates
O’Carroll believes employers owe each person a curated view of their path, covering both career development and the AI tools they’re being asked to adopt. He separates pushing AI adoption from helping people adopt it. Employers also need to show people how they’ll be supported along that path. “Mandates don’t work when it comes to AI adoption,” explains O’Carroll. “It has to be more peer-to-peer, as opposed to how historical education systems worked.”
A large retailer he’s spoken with recently took that approach. The company is building a champions program, with several champions in each department or group. Champions build their own skills while leading colleagues through the change, and the role is open to anyone in the organization, including junior employees. “We’re seeing more junior talent, the ones that are AI native, leading some of these conversations, because they’re the most exposed and the most familiar with the tools,” says O’Carroll.
Until recently, many organizations treated AI as a free-for-all and encouraged employees to use as much of it as they wanted. O’Carroll sees companies moving toward more structured adoption, partly because of cost and partly because of the effect on people. Organizations are becoming more deliberate about how they distribute tools and how employees use them. “It’s much more on the organization to define their rules of engagement,” notes O’Carroll. “How do you want this to roll out, as opposed to it just happening?”
Reading the hiring data
The frontier labs are releasing new capabilities faster than organizations can adopt them, and nearly everyone is playing catch-up. O’Carroll finds broad agreement that AI adoption is at a very early stage, and much less agreement on what it will mean for society, organizations, and individuals. He also sees effects arriving well before that debate settles. “There are immediate impacts that we’re seeing that aren’t the sensational headlines,” says O’Carroll. “There are impacts that we’re seeing in the marketplace today.”
Anthropic’s research found that workers aged 22 to 25 entering the occupations most exposed to AI were finding jobs about 14% less often after ChatGPT’s launch than in 2022. O’Carroll wants HR teams to apply the same scrutiny inside their own organizations before changing course. “Rather than making off-the-cuff decisions about how to do things, we need to look more at the telemetry about what’s going on,” explains O’Carroll. “What’s actually happening with our hiring? What kind of skills are we hiring for?”
At companies that have adopted AI, research shows senior roles grew 31% relative to non-adopters since October 2022, compared with 6% for junior roles. Many organizations say they can’t find people with the right skills, even while letting employees go in other departments. O’Carroll sees room to redeploy those employees, and he expects individuals to take part in that conversation too. “There’s definitely responsibility on the individual to stay relevant, to stay aware, and to have those conversations within the organization,” adds O’Carroll. “What can I do? Where does this leave me?”
Redesigning the entry level
Entry-level roles have changed, but they haven’t gone away. IBM plans to triple its US entry-level hiring in 2026 and has rewritten those roles around analysis, problem-solving, and responsible AI use. O’Carroll sees a paradox facing any company that stops hiring juniors. “How do I get more senior people if I’m not bringing people in and training them up on how we work, our systems, and our knowledge?” asks O’Carroll.
The work inside those roles is also changing. O’Carroll expects entry-level employees to spend less time doing a task and more time reviewing whether it was done correctly, and applicants will need demonstrated skills to stand out. He sees that change happening across departments, well beyond software development. “AI is going to automate some tasks, but the human aspect of being able to discern whether that was a good output still needs to be trained,” explains O’Carroll. “Organizations need to become better at that training.”
O’Carroll doesn’t see that training as something employees should have to find outside the company. The institutional knowledge a new hire needs already lives inside the organization, along with the expectations for how people work and use the tools. “It’s more embedded in the organization,” concludes O’Carroll. “It’s somewhat akin to an apprenticeship, but it’s how you train people up on how you expect them to work within your organization and how they use these tools.”
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TL;DR
Jarlath O'Carroll
Jobspeaker.ai
Founder & CEO
Founder & CEO
AI tools are advancing faster than most organizations can absorb them, and early-career employees are carrying much of the uncertainty. Workers aged 26 to 30 are the least satisfied age group in BambooHR’s 2026 Employee Happiness Report, with an eNPS of 31. Their score trails employees aged 51 to 60 by 17 points. Younger workers have also seen only a moderate recovery in happiness while older colleagues made strong gains. Growing companies that want to keep early-career talent need a clearer answer about where those roles are headed.
Jarlath O’Carroll is Founder and CEO of Jobspeaker.ai, an AI skills-based platform that connects learners, educators, workforce agencies, and employers from K-12 through a working career. He founded the company in 2015 after more than two decades in product, technology, and change management roles. At Wells Fargo, he helped launch one of the first online banking systems in the US and led product management for the Wachovia merger. He also ran large public sector change programs for Deloitte Consulting and launched Charles Schwab’s first online brokerage system in the UK.
“Younger employees are looking for more direction from their employer. They want to see that the employer has a vision for them personally, and that they can develop their career with that employer. If they don’t see that, they’re not as enthusiastic, or they’re out,” says O’Carroll. He places that responsibility on employers, especially as AI changes what early-career work looks like. Employees need guidance on developing their careers and on adopting the AI tools their jobs now depend on.
Adoption without mandates
O’Carroll believes employers owe each person a curated view of their path, covering both career development and the AI tools they’re being asked to adopt. He separates pushing AI adoption from helping people adopt it. Employers also need to show people how they’ll be supported along that path. “Mandates don’t work when it comes to AI adoption,” explains O’Carroll. “It has to be more peer-to-peer, as opposed to how historical education systems worked.”
A large retailer he’s spoken with recently took that approach. The company is building a champions program, with several champions in each department or group. Champions build their own skills while leading colleagues through the change, and the role is open to anyone in the organization, including junior employees. “We’re seeing more junior talent, the ones that are AI native, leading some of these conversations, because they’re the most exposed and the most familiar with the tools,” says O’Carroll.
Until recently, many organizations treated AI as a free-for-all and encouraged employees to use as much of it as they wanted. O’Carroll sees companies moving toward more structured adoption, partly because of cost and partly because of the effect on people. Organizations are becoming more deliberate about how they distribute tools and how employees use them. “It’s much more on the organization to define their rules of engagement,” notes O’Carroll. “How do you want this to roll out, as opposed to it just happening?”
Reading the hiring data
The frontier labs are releasing new capabilities faster than organizations can adopt them, and nearly everyone is playing catch-up. O’Carroll finds broad agreement that AI adoption is at a very early stage, and much less agreement on what it will mean for society, organizations, and individuals. He also sees effects arriving well before that debate settles. “There are immediate impacts that we’re seeing that aren’t the sensational headlines,” says O’Carroll. “There are impacts that we’re seeing in the marketplace today.”
Anthropic’s research found that workers aged 22 to 25 entering the occupations most exposed to AI were finding jobs about 14% less often after ChatGPT’s launch than in 2022. O’Carroll wants HR teams to apply the same scrutiny inside their own organizations before changing course. “Rather than making off-the-cuff decisions about how to do things, we need to look more at the telemetry about what’s going on,” explains O’Carroll. “What’s actually happening with our hiring? What kind of skills are we hiring for?”
At companies that have adopted AI, research shows senior roles grew 31% relative to non-adopters since October 2022, compared with 6% for junior roles. Many organizations say they can’t find people with the right skills, even while letting employees go in other departments. O’Carroll sees room to redeploy those employees, and he expects individuals to take part in that conversation too. “There’s definitely responsibility on the individual to stay relevant, to stay aware, and to have those conversations within the organization,” adds O’Carroll. “What can I do? Where does this leave me?”
Redesigning the entry level
Entry-level roles have changed, but they haven’t gone away. IBM plans to triple its US entry-level hiring in 2026 and has rewritten those roles around analysis, problem-solving, and responsible AI use. O’Carroll sees a paradox facing any company that stops hiring juniors. “How do I get more senior people if I’m not bringing people in and training them up on how we work, our systems, and our knowledge?” asks O’Carroll.
The work inside those roles is also changing. O’Carroll expects entry-level employees to spend less time doing a task and more time reviewing whether it was done correctly, and applicants will need demonstrated skills to stand out. He sees that change happening across departments, well beyond software development. “AI is going to automate some tasks, but the human aspect of being able to discern whether that was a good output still needs to be trained,” explains O’Carroll. “Organizations need to become better at that training.”
O’Carroll doesn’t see that training as something employees should have to find outside the company. The institutional knowledge a new hire needs already lives inside the organization, along with the expectations for how people work and use the tools. “It’s more embedded in the organization,” concludes O’Carroll. “It’s somewhat akin to an apprenticeship, but it’s how you train people up on how you expect them to work within your organization and how they use these tools.”