AI is taking junior tasks. What happens next?

Inside this issue:

• The bottom rung is breaking
• Measure what roles should teach
• Build your leadership bench early

Hey HR Folks,

The routine tasks that once taught freshers how work gets done are the first ones AI is taking over. Ten years from now, those freshers would have been the leaders you promote. Most pipelines show the damage only when a senior role opens and nobody is ready.

1. The bottom rung is breaking

Fresher hiring in India’s IT sector fell from about 600,000 in FY22 to about 120,000 in FY25, according to Xpheno. PwC’s 2026 AI Jobs Barometer found that entry-level roles most exposed to AI are seven times more likely to ask for senior skills like judgement, based on US job ads.

The RUNG framework in the blog gives four places to act:

• Map the skills each entry-level role needs today and the ones it will need next.
• Put AI training into the first month of every new hire’s plan.
• Protect the tasks that build judgement and hand the rest to AI.
• Plan entry-level hiring as part of your leadership pipeline.

Read the RUNG framework →

2. You can’t rebuild a rung you haven’t measured

Redesigning a role starts with knowing what good looks like in it. A competency framework lists the skills and behaviours each role needs and scores them from level 1, basic training, to level 4, master. 

Start with one role: 

• Pick one entry-level role and list the competencies it needs. 
• Rate each competency as critical, necessary or good to have. 
• Set the level you expect at joining and at the 12 month mark. 
• Ask the employee and manager to assess the current level separately. 

Read the competency framework guide → 

3. Build the bench before you need it

Those levels also show who could grow into the next role. Succession planning picks the roles that would hurt most to lose and checks whether anyone is ready to step in. 

Four moves to start: 

• List the roles your business would struggle most to cover. 
• Mark every role that has no identified successor. 
• Plot current employees on a 9 box grid of performance and potential. 
• Give each successor one stretch project tied to a gap you found. 

Read the succession planning guide → 

Your pipeline checklist for this week

Pick one entry-level role and one critical senior role:

• Write down what the entry-level role should teach in its first 12 months.
• Mark which of those tasks AI already handles.
• Name one person who could move into the senior role.
• Note the one skill that person still needs to build.

If you cannot answer the first line in one sentence, start there.

See how Keka maps your bench →

Until next time,