The disappearing rung
I’ve seen the evolution of the career ladder closely in the past couple of decades. Most of us joined as graduates, learnt the business from the inside and grew either with the same company or moved. It had a clear first rung. Over the years I have watched that ladder get redrawn more than once. Each time, the bottom rung is the first thing up for debate.
I have also seen what happens when organisations get that debate wrong.
A few years ago, prior to covid, I watched a few GCCs decide they only wanted experienced hires. The logic sounded reasonable. They needed people who could 'hit the ground running'. Nobody had time to train graduates. Campus programs were small or not prioritised.
It looked efficient from the top. Within a couple of years, the gaps started to show. Experienced talent was expensive and hard to find or didn’t have the skills needed, and they weren’t able to scale quickly. Teams lacked people who had grown up inside the business. In addition, when these companies went back to campus, they found the door wasn't as open as they thought, and just because they were a global brand, they couldn’t immediately get the top talent.
They had to rebuild university relationships from scratch. They had to win back the trust of students who remembered being overlooked. Reputation with early-career talent is built slowly and lost quickly. Clawing it back took far longer than walking away ever did.
I have watched another mistake too. In India, companies went to campus with confidence and made offers to entire batches. Then joining dates were postponed and postponed again. Some offers were withdrawn altogether. Graduates who had planned their next step around those offers were left waiting.
Those students did not forget. Neither did their juniors, their professors or their placement cells. A withdrawn offer is not just a hiring decision. It is a brand decision, and its effects outlast the business cycle that caused it.
A new name for an old mistake?
Now I am seeing the pattern begin again, this time with AI as the reason. PwC's 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer calls it 'seniorisation', as entry-level roles increasingly ask for skills that used to sit in senior jobs. In a recent survey of US hiring managers, 45% said one senior employee working with AI now covers work that several graduates used to do.
The data is not one-directional. NACE actually raised its Class of 2026 hiring projection in the spring. But the inclination towards experience is real, and the argument behind it sounds familiar. Why train people when you can hire people who already know?
But my experience says, cutting entry-level hiring does not remove the cost of developing people. It defers it. The leadership bench of the early 2030s is being built, or not built, by the hiring choices made today. The senior-plus-AI model works well right up until it needs a new senior.
And graduates are paying close attention. Monster's 2026 research found that 89% of graduates worry AI could replace entry-level roles, up from 64% a year earlier. Every paused programme and every promise that slips will be remembered, just as it was last time.
Some employers are choosing differently. Accenture is hiring more entry-level talent in 2026 than in 2025, betting that graduates who grew up with generative AI bring a fluency the rest of the workforce lacks. That points to a new shape for the first rung. Juniors teach AI fluency upward. Seniors teach judgement downward.
The lesson I’ve learnt is simple. Early careers is not a hiring channel you switch on and off. It is a relationship. Break it once and you spend years rebuilding it.
So, it is worth asking now, before the bill arrives. Are we about to make the same mistake again, just with a better excuse, or do you think it is different this time? Tell me, what do you think?
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