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The GAP

Looking for an Entry Level Job? 

You’re fresh out of college. You’ve got a degree, some ambition, and you're ready to climb the corporate ladder. First stop? That entry-level job where you learn the ropes - maybe as a customer support rep, a junior marketer, or a service coordinator at a car dealership.

But here’s the twist…  That job doesn’t exist anymore.

It’s been replaced. Not by another human. But by an AI agent that never sleeps, never takes a break, and never messes up a booking.

And that is the real challenge of AI no one’s talking about.

AI Impact on Entry-Level Roles

Recent studies highlight the accelerating impact of AI on entry-level employment:

• A survey by Clarify Capital revealed that 86% of executives plan to replace entry-level roles with AI, with nearly one in six having already implemented such changes. ​hrdailyadvisor.blr.com
  
  Another report indicates that AI could eliminate up to 56% of entry-level jobs within the next five years, emphasizing the urgency for workforce adaptation. ​wellable.co

These shifts are not limited to a single industry. In customer service, for instance, AI-driven automation has led to a 30% decrease in operational costs, streamlining processes and reducing the need for extensive human intervention.

Trying to Recruit for the Next-Level JOBs?

Now imagine you are a VP Marketing, looking to get somebody into the Director of Marketing position. In the past you’d either promote somebody internal who had been here for several years and shined, or you’d recruit from another company in your industry space.

The challenge: there are no, or just a few, humans in those positions and AI Agents are not ready to be promoted.

The on-the-job market specific learning of competitive landscape, unique selling propositions for you and you competitors, the main pain points of your customers… you have nobody who has been trained on the material.

Traditionally, graduates learned on the job through internships, assistant roles, or junior positions. But with AI now handling tasks like data analysis, research, and customer coordination, those stepping-stone roles are gone.

You post your jobs, and there are no candidates to recruit!

The bottom ranks of the career ladder are now broken.

The Growing Pains?

For now, the pipeline is broken. It’s a structural breakdown in how talent flows through the system.

Students are graduating with skills for jobs that no longer exist. They can’t find jobs.
Employers want experienced professionals who don't need training. They can’t find experienced hires.

But if no one gets that first job anymore, how do they gain experience?

The steppingstones are gone, and the gap is growing. This is not a 2030 problem. It’s a 2026 crisis.

Then again, this is not new. 

Academia will adjust their curriculum to graduate students ready for the age of AI, and companies will adjust to reestablish processes for succession planning.

The difference now is that the change is happening at a much faster speed than the pace at which institutions can adjust. 

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Our Experience

11Sight's AI Agents in Automotive

Let’s take a real-world look at how 11Sight’s AI Agent is transforming dealership service operations.

Across several quarters, dealerships using 11Sight’s AI saw massive gains in efficiency and customer engagement - without adding headcount. The AI agent seamlessly took over repetitive, time-consuming service booking tasks and improved every key metric that matters to a dealership’s bottom line.

Here’s how:

• AI now handles 80% of all incoming calls, up from just over 60% earlier
• Call resolution without human escalation jumped to 61%, streamlining support operations
• The capture rate of previously unanswered calls rose from 15% to 66%, helping dealerships recapture lost revenue opportunities

And when it comes to productivity:

• Appointments per customer call nearly doubled, boosting service bay utilization
• Tasks completed per call rose to 40%, showing that the AI isn’t just answering calls—it’s getting real work done
• The tasks-to-appointments ratio hit 153%, meaning the AI is driving multiple outcomes per customer interaction

This isn’t just about reducing labor—it’s about boosting performance across the board. One dealership even had to hire an additional service advisor to handle the increase in customer re-engagement driven by the AI.

Building Internal Efficiencies

And how are 11Sight’s conversational AI Agents improving so rapidly? Well, it is the internal Sentinel AI Agents that look at every AI-human conversation, create analytics and reports for customers, and identify improvement opportunities for the engineering team.

Sentinel generated reports are 100% accurate and already have reduced the need for software developers.  As for improvement opportunities, that is where AI Agents have been a game changer. Customer success no longer needs to look for a needle in a haystack (listen to thousand conversations to find a few improvement opportunities), the Sentinel does the first pass, and the next steps are streamlined.

The result? More bookings, more satisfied customers, and a smarter way to scale service operations - automatically.

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Path Forward

But Don’t Panic - There’s a Way Forward

AI isn't destroying opportunity. It's reshaping it.

The solution starts with a mindset shift.

• Universities must rethink how they prepare students. Real-world, vertical-specific education needs to be the norm.
• Companies need to offer new pathways - internships, mentorships, AI-assisted apprenticeships.
• We all need to accept that the old job ladder has changed, and build a new one.

So, what to do in the Interim?

Just like an entry level worker, luckily the AI Agents still need nurturing and training. 

Our advice to recent graduates is to be on top of every AI tool out there in the market. If you get an interview, your positioning should be “Hire me, and I’ll use all the tools to give you the productivity you expect from four people” 

As for hiring managers, AI is not a panacea, like every entry level person (or, like VP or president) it makes mistakes. It is all about the collaboration in your team as you bounce ideas from each other, implement checks and balances. Do not let AI be “the smartest person” in every room who makes all the decisions, only idiots think they can be that (we all know some people like that). 

For the time being, human in the loop is still needed to get maximum value from AI without doing any damage.

Rebuilding the Career Path

This transition isn’t about fear - it’s about redesign.

Entry-level jobs may be disappearing, but opportunity isn’t. The key is to redesign how people grow, how teams are built, and how AI complements rather than replaces human potential.

Companies that do this well won't just adapt to the future. They’ll shape it.

Interested in how 11Sight’s AI agent could streamline your service operations?
Visit 11Sight’s Automotive Solutions to learn more.

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