Rethink entry-level hiring to succeed in the AI era

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Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And Gini, I, you know, I’m thinking about just getting started in the workforce now, and, you know, I’ve, I’ve never had a job in my life and

Gini Dietrich: Oh, yeah.

Chip Griffin: You know, being so young and green, I, I need to figure out what I’m going to do.

Gini Dietrich: You know, it’s funny because I do a lot of zoom in… I zoom into a lot of classes to talk about PESO, and one of the questions I always get, and especially right now is, you know, how am I, what job am I gonna do when I graduate? How am I gonna get a good job? The job market sucks. Then nobody’s hiring for entry level because of AI.

Like, what am I gonna do? And that question, I would say, that question has come up. In every single presentation that I’ve done for the last two years. And kids are really concerned about it. And, you know, in Counselor’s Academy through PRSA, we’ve been having the conversation too with other agency owners about, you know, who’s hiring entry level, and if you are, what are you doing?

And it’s crickets. Like nobody’s hiring entry level professionals right now, because everything that we would have someone do as a brand new professional or as an intern, AI can do and do it much more effectively. So, you know, news releases and blog posts, drafts and social media drafts and media lists and all that, like, it’s way more efficient to have AI do it.

So one of the conversations we’ve been having here is it’s really important to me as an individual to continue to give back to the industry. So how do we create an intern program that’s less about that kind of work and more about giving them the critical skills that they need to be able to orchestrate prompts, integrate AI into their roles.

And I think that, I think that’s the path that we are gonna probably go down.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, I mean, it, it’s an important topic. It is, I think there’s a confluence of events that are making it particularly challenging for entry-level workers today. So you’ve got the rise of AI along with economic and other uncertainty coming together.

So, you know, there, there’s a number of forces that just make it really difficult. And I think it’s all layered on top of a higher education system that frankly is almost entirely broken. Yeah. And obviously that’s not really something we’re gonna solve here on, on this show, nor is it really the general domain of it.

But I think it is, it’s a fundamental challenge that, that most higher education is not really oriented around helping students to find jobs afterwards. Right. That’s, that’s almost an afterthought. Yep. And I’m not saying that it needs to become vocational training. At the same time, you know, four years of pure academics, and discouraging the use of things like AI. A lot of, you know, colleges and universities say, oh no, no, you can’t use AI to complete your papers. Well, that’s not the reality that these students are about to embark upon.

Gini Dietrich: Right.

Chip Griffin: And so, you know, to me, that reminds me of, you know, years gone by where, oh, you can’t use Wikipedia, you can’t use the internet. You can’t use calculators. I mean, when I grew up, you can’t use a calculator in math class. I mean, these things just, it really is an antiquated system. So you’ve got that as their stepping stone into the workforce, and then they’ve got these headwinds of the economy and AI fighting against them.

And so I do think it is, it’s a challenge for the industry, but ultimately it’s a challenge for individual agencies as well. Because even if you don’t want to give back, you have to think about how you’re going to staff your business, not just today, but for the longer term. And historically, agencies have promoted from within quite often, or hired somebody who was an entry level somewhere else.

And so at some point, if we don’t figure out how to solve this entry level hire problem, we’re gonna be in a situation where there’s nobody out there for those mid-tier roles that we need to hire still.

Gini Dietrich: Right. That’s exactly right. And that’s the, we continue to have that conversation in every single one of my leadership team meetings where there is a section where we’re talking about interns on the path for entry-level professionals.

Because you’re exactly right, if we don’t solve this now as agency leaders and as an industry, there will be nobody at the mid-level to take the jobs in five years. No one. So we have to figure this out.

Chip Griffin: And I think a lot of it is reimagining what that entry level role is.

Gini Dietrich: Yep.

Chip Griffin: Which means as, as owners, as bosses, we need to think about how we structure those roles.

But it also means that in preparation for this, you know, colleges, universities, intern programs also need to be thinking about what skills they’re sending people into the workforce with. And I think I’ve mentioned this previously on the show, I mean, effectively everybody is starting out as a manager now.

It just may, may be that instead of managing people, you’re managing AI agents or assistants. That’s still a management role.

Gini Dietrich: Mm-hmm.  Yep, yep.

Chip Griffin: And so, you know, whereas we used to bring people in and, and they would be purely managed and just… They would be the, you know, the functionaries who did what we told them to do.

They need to be in a position that they can actually direct resources right out of the gate. And so that, that requires a lot more training before the job, but really a lot more probably on the job training. And we’re awful at training managers at every level within our businesses, including most owners have just awful management skills.

And so if we don’t have them at the higher levels, how do we get them to the entry level?

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I think you’re right. I think we, this has been a challenge forever. I mean, the way I got quote unquote management skills is my boss came to me and said, so and so has just been put on a PIP, and she has 60 days to figure it out, and we’d like to manage you through that.

Like, we’d like you to manage her through that process. And I was like…what?

Okay. Guess what? She didn’t make it and it was a terrible experience for me, but that’s how they quote, unquote, gave me management training. Right? That’s not management training. That’s not leadership training. That’s like trying to, to figure out what you’re good at or what your strengths are by trying to help somebody who’s failing but doesn’t want the help and doesn’t wanna try to succeed.

Terrible idea. All to say, I think you’re exactly right. And I think one of the big things that everyone in general is missing around AI is critical thinking. And I think we, we say, okay, like, oh, this is gonna make me so much faster and I’m gonna prompt it and I’m gonna get it what it needs. And then I forget about actually thinking through, is this right? Is it what I’m trying to accomplish? Is it strategic? Is it going to deliver results for the client? We don’t, we’ve, we sort of are in this world of, oh my gosh, this has made me so much more, so much faster and more productive. We’re losing that critical thinking piece.

 And I think providing that and teaching the young professionals how to use critical thinking skills to orchestrate an army of AI bots is exactly where we should be training them.

Chip Griffin: I mean, I think ultimately learning and development needs to be a much stronger piece of even the smallest agencies. Yep. And there needs to be a much greater emphasis on the mentorship and coaching and training of everybody at, again, at every level within the business, including yourself as the owner.

Yep. And, and if you’re not committed to that, it’s going to be very difficult to successfully integrate new entry level hires of any kind in the future because they do need greater support than ever before. It’s not just, Hey, you know, go through this, you know, list and figure out, you know, which emails are bad or, you know, go find email addresses for these reporters.

Right? Or, you know, the, the basic tasks that a lot of people may have been asked to do in the last 10 or 20 years, they’re gone. And so everything requires that higher level of judgment. And the only way that we can expect good results is if we’re providing the assistance from above.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I completely agree.You know, we do, I think we do a fairly good job of internal training because we have the PESO model. So you know, everybody on our team has to go through it and everybody on our team has to be certified and everybody on our team has to keep up with it. Everybody on our team has to understand what I’m producing from a content perspective every week.

And you know, one of the things I say constantly to them is, you guys have to be ahead no matter what. You can’t have a client who knows more about it than you do. You can’t have a client who says, well, I saw this in or, I heard this on Gini’s podcast, and you don’t know what they’re talking about. Like you have to be ahead of all of them.

And so because of that, we have twice a month internal learning. And I think taking that down a level, and honestly truly, I would actually say that the younger professionals are better at the PESO Model certification outputs than I would say some of the more senior level professionals. Because they don’t have preconceived notions, they don’t have, oh, this is the way I’ve always done things. Right. So they’re much more, they absorb the information better and they output the expected outputs much more effectively, I think. But you know, if you don’t have that kind of training internally, like, how are you teaching them intellectual property and how are you teaching them your processes? And like everybody has a different way of doing work for clients.

How are you teaching that so that when they go into AI to get the output they need, they understand this is the output I’m trying to get and this is what it looks like. I think those are the things we have to be thinking about is our intellectual property, our unique way of doing things, and our process.

That’s the kinds of things you can be teaching to young professionals.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And look to your point, I think that to the extent that agencies are doing, you know, training and development type things, most of it is focused on the how you do your job bit, right?

Gini Dietrich: Yep, yep.

Chip Griffin: So you know, how, how do you implement the PESO model? How do you communicate effectively with the press? How do you, you know, write effectively? Those are the kinds of things that most agencies have spent at least some time on. Maybe not enough, but at least some.

But it’s, but as you back into the, the things that you’ve also mentioned, processes, you know, tho those are things that don’t get the same level of attention in the training and in the professional development.

And then when you get back from that and you’re looking at things like project management or just basic human management, those are not things that have any amount of investment in the vast majority of agencies. And it’s, you know, it’s always shocking to me how many times I go into an agency, you know, for one of my Agency Business Checkups, and I sit there and I talk with them and I understand they’re not doing the regular one-on-one communications with direct reports.

Wow. And I, and I know, I mean, this is, everybody knows, this is my pet peeve. Yes. But it is the fundamentals of management. How do you manage somebody if you’re not having regular, ongoing meetings with them? Right. It just, it doesn’t make any sense. But there’s, there’s no culture around that. There’s no culture around communications .

And particularly as we’re moving into this era of AI, we need to be much better at documenting processes and, you know, all that because the more we document processes, the better results we can get from the technology, which makes the lives of all of the human employees better.

And so we need to be focused on a lot of these things that maybe we could get by without doing in the past, and maybe it just, you know, it was a, a 10 or 15% efficiency hit or something like that. Now it just, it fundamentally just doesn’t work if you’re not focused on how to do these things effectively. So we really need to, again, at all levels, but particularly with those entry level hires, we need to groom them into the roles by providing them with those skill sets, providing them with the documentation around processes, and that’s how we’ll start to get better results more quickly.

But that doesn’t really solve the question of how do we continue to hire entry level people at all? Why? Because there’s this big urge for people to say, look, that because AI is so good, we don’t even need entry level hires anymore. Yeah. And I mean, I am of the viewpoint that that is not accurate.

That you can still hire people fresh outta college or with just a year or two of experience, but you’ve got to rethink what you’re thinking of them to do. Right. If you think of them in the old terms of doing just that routine, brute force labor. No, there is no role for that. But if you elevate it and you say, look, you know, these kids are coming in and they’ve got something to add, they’ve got value to offer.

We just need to perhaps move them along faster in our minds than we might have otherwise. But in their world, they’re not, because they don’t, they didn’t grow up 30 years ago like we did in the industry, so you didn’t know what all of the photocopying and faxing was back then. So you’ve got to be open to putting them into roles that just blow your mind that this is an entry-level responsibility now.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I think that’s exactly right. And I think we have a responsibility as leaders to do that. Because to your point earlier, if we don’t, we’re not gonna have employees to hire at the mid-level and then at the senior level, and it’s going to be a disaster.

So I think we have our responsibility as leaders to do that.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, but we, I mean, yes, we have a responsibility, but ultimately we also need to do what’s right for the business today.

Gini Dietrich: Sure, of course.

Chip Griffin: And so, so what the, what I think people need to do is to figure out how to bridge that gap. So that you can do what’s right for the business today, while also helping you for the long term.

Because as, as much as we all sit here and we want to say, well, we’re doing right for the industry, we’re doing right for our business in three to five years. That’s not a reality that works for most people, particularly on the tight numbers that most smaller agencies are operating with.

So, you know, we do need to find a way to make sure that we are getting what we need today from these, and they’re not, I don’t wanna say charity hires, but they’re not, they’re not viewed solely as investments. They have to be something that has the more near term payoff as well.

Gini Dietrich: Sure, of course.

Yeah. I don’t disagree with that.

Chip Griffin: I think that does require a mindset shift for a lot of us who would never dream of, of handing off some of the responsibility that we’re now in a position of needing to hand off to people who have very little experience. But the more that you’ve established proper SOPs and you’ve put together the right systems for checking, verification, approval, et cetera, all of those things, it, you’re in a much better position.

And honestly, the use of AI makes it easier to entrust more junior employees. I think a lot of people sit here and say, oh, you know, it’s scary ’cause now we’ve got, you know, junior people with no experience running the AI. Yes. But if as long as you are overseeing the training of the AI, then the AI tends to remain within its lane.

The problem you run into with AI is when you don’t give it any guidelines, when you don’t give it any context, when you don’t give it the structure, that’s where it does things like hallucinate and, you know, engage in crazy behavior. But otherwise it does a much better job than humans of remaining within its lane. And so it can actually help the juniors to do their jobs more effectively without the level of risk that some of us may be concerned about.

Gini Dietrich: And I will add to that, with your SOPs and your process. Although we talk all the time about building a business that you love and that works for you, there are still going to be some of you who want to sell your business.

And having those SOPs in the process really well-defined is going to help your sell price significantly. Yes. Because if you can just hand them the recipe and say, this is how we do things, and this is how we’ve done things for years and it works, and these are the kinds of results, that’s going to help your sell price.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. One hundred percent because then you’ve got a buyer who’s looking at something and they’re not just, you know, buying a client roster or short term revenue or something like that. They’re actually, you know, buying something that has sustainable value to it. And particularly in the age of AI, where those SOPs can then become the guidelines and guardrails for the AI tools to utilize.

It really is a big differentiator, not just for your sales price, but for today, right? Because if you’ve, if you built those things in there, then you can be a leaner operation. Because the reality is we are going to accomplish more with fewer human headcount. That’s just going to happen. Probably not as efficient as some people dream it might be, but still more efficient than we are today.

And so it gives you a lot of flexibility if you are in a position to feed the information and SOPs into the AI tools to get you where you want to go. So it will take a lot of pressure off of you as the owner today, and that opens up possibilities for your future, whether you want to sell or not.

Gini Dietrich: Yep, totally. I’m a big fan of SOPs.

Chip Griffin: I always have been a big fan of SOPs and checklists and those sorts of things. I think they, they can save your bacon. But you know, today they’re just, you can’t live without them, right? No, totally agree. Totally. They were nice to have process improvements 20 years ago.

Today, if you don’t have them, you are really holding yourself back because you can’t use most of these tools capably without them.

Gini Dietrich: Yep. 100%.

Chip Griffin: So you’ve got to, you can’t fly by the seat of your pants anymore. It really needs that structure. Entry level hires need that structure. AI needs that structure.

And if you’re going to have a successful agency for the future, you need to solve for this today.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. And truth be told, everyone in your agency needs that structured.

Chip Griffin: Everybody. Absolutely.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, everyone does.

Chip Griffin: Absolutely. So don’t be afraid of entry level hires. Don’t decide that you’re not gonna hire them and just use the AI for it.

Rethink what the role of an entry level hire is in your business because that will allow you to build both for today and for the future.

Gini Dietrich: Absolutely.

Chip Griffin: So with that, we will wrap up this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And it depends.