AI Is Coming for (Entry-Level) Comms Jobs

Recently, we hired our first full-time summer intern (Sarah Rowe – she’s awesome, by the way). But as we pulled together the job description, we ran into a question: what exactly is entry-level communications work now?

When I started in the biz, junior communicators did research. We drafted news releases, created reports, summarized meetings and faced off against the blank screen. Some of it was tedious. Almost all of it taught us something.

These days, generative AI can do a rough version of all of that before your coffee gets cold.

That’s great in some ways. But it’s also a pretty big problem. 

The issue surfaced at D2L’s recent Executive Summit in Phoenix, where Abacus Data CEO David Coletto led a fascinating discussion about work in an age of precarity. Abacus Data’s Canadian research found that 55 per cent of workers aged 18 to 29 worry AI will force them to change careers within five years.

Meanwhile, D2L’s survey of HR leaders found that 56 per cent are delegating fewer basic tasks  to early-career employees because of AI. Nearly half said productivity expectations for entry-level workers are rising. And 58 per cent worry that cutting junior roles now could leave them short of qualified senior leaders within five years.

That last number should make every communications leader wake up in a cold sweat. 

Because the grunt work we did was never just grunt work. It was the gym. It was the track. It was drills and practice preparing you for the big leagues. 

We learned judgment by making decisions — sometimes really bad ones — and having someone explain why our idea stank. We learned to write by writing, and failing. As a junior speechwriter, I once wrote a speech for Mike Harris placing the Danube River in Prague – a 668KM geographical error – after which the Premier bought me an atlas. 

Look – the first rung of the comms ladder was greasy and gross, but it was how we climbed.

The Canadian data on the health of that first rung is still emerging. Statistics Canada has found weaker employment growth among younger workers since generative AI became widely available, but they caution that AI is only one of several possible causes.

The Labour Market Information Council notes that widespread entry-level job destruction has not been proven. But they caution businesses could create a self-fulfilling prophecy if they simply transfer junior tasks to machines without redesigning the jobs.

So, this means us comms oldsters have two immediate and pressing responsibilities.

First, communications companies and in-house teams need to build a new kind of entry-level onramp on purpose. New recruits should be AI-fluent. They should know how to prompt, test, refine and create. They may even bring technical instincts the rest of us do not have yet.

But their job cannot be “ask the machine to do the work and tidy up what comes back.” They still need to research, draft, question, listen and learn how decisions get made. They need supervised client exposure. They need assignments that build judgment, not just output. They need room to screw up before the stakes become too high. Without those skills, I would argue, they cannot use AI properly. 

The World Economic Forum’s new framework calls for action around job access, job design, talent pipelines and education. In plain language: we need to rebuild the first rung rather than complain after it disappears.

Second, young communicators need to show that they get it – that AI doesn’t replace judgement or creativity.

They need to demonstrate that they can think without AI and also work intelligently with it. They need strong and even pyrotechnically stunning, human creative writing. They also need curiosity, judgment and the “soft” skills that are actually the most durable of all skills: reading a room, managing a client, taking feedback, admitting uncertainty and learning quickly.

Their strongest pitch may be this: “I can help you use these tools better, and I’m ready to keep learning everything else.”

If we do these two things well, AI could help junior people advance faster and contribute sooner.

If we do not — sure, we may get a few years of dazzling productivity — but at the cost of experienced communicators in the long term. No first rung means nobody climbs. And without people climbing, we end up with an industry full of doddering old poops with no one left to inherit the kingdom.

We will also be living in a world of slop: polished language with no instinct, no creativity, and no clue what the audience needs. Without the right humans in charge, we will create an AI Ouroboros of suck, institutionalized and codified and utterly, utterly boring. 

Let’s avoid that, shall we?