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The entry-level talent pipeline is being entirely restructured. If agency owners don’t figure out what role a young professional actually plays in an AI-assisted agency, they won’t just struggle to hire today. They’ll have no one to promote in five years.

In this episode, Chip and Gini dig into what’s happening with entry-level hiring right now, and why the answer can’t be to stop hiring junior staff altogether. The conversation covers why the old model of routine work is gone, what needs to replace it, and why agencies that don’t solve this problem soon are setting themselves up for failure.

The episode opens with an observation from Gini: every presentation she gives to college classes lately surfaces the same anxiety from students. Nobody’s hiring at the entry level because AI can handle the work those roles used to cover — news releases, media lists, social drafts, basic research. How can they find jobs today, and get the on-the-job training they need to move forward in their careers?

Chip frames the problem as a junction of circumstances: the rise of AI, economic uncertainty, and a higher education system that hasn’t evolved with the workforce reality. Colleges discouraging AI use while their graduates are about to enter workplaces built around it is, as he puts it, the same mistake as banning calculators in math class. The students coming in aren’t unprepared because they’re less capable, they’re underprepared because the institutions that trained them weren’t keeping up with the times.

Chip and Gini agree that entry-level hires aren’t obsolete, but the role must change. Instead of being the lowest rung of the ladder, new professionals need to come in already functioning like managers — just managing AI tools and processes instead of people. That requires more on-the-job training, better-documented processes and SOPs, and a genuine commitment to learning and development that most agencies still don’t have. There’s more than one upside, though. Better documentation and SOPs don’t just help entry-level hires do their jobs — they make your agency more efficient, reduce owner dependency, and, for those who want to sell someday, significantly improve the value of the business.

Their closing argument is not to avoid entry-level hiring because the old version of the role is antiquated. Rethink what the role is, invest in the systems that support it, and get comfortable assigning junior people with responsibilities that would have felt premature five years ago. The alternative is a mid-level talent shortage that will be very hard to fix. [read the transcript]

About Chip Griffin

Chip Griffin is the founder of SAGA and creator of the Build to Own approach, helping PR and marketing agency owners get more profit, time, and choices from the businesses they run. Full bio