Dear Class of 2025, Your Job Description Is Already Outdated

First off.. congrats! You’ve made it through years of study, applications, interviews, and now you're stepping into the workforce.

But the workforce you’re entering is nothing like the one you were trained for by your professors.

AI has moved from assistants to autonomous agents to full agent teams. These systems don’t just support work, they perform it. Across tools, across tasks, with minimal human input.

Most graduates aren’t being prepared for this. 

They’re stepping into workflows run by AI agents that make decisions, coordinate execution, and move faster than most onboarding programs acknowledge.

It’s not your fault you’re unprepared. It’s no one’s really. 

But if we don’t prepare graduates to manage agents—and reset how we onboard and develop them—the responsibility will fall on HR, L&D, and every leader accountable for workforce readiness.

We’re Still Onboarding for a World That No Longer Exists

Most onboarding still assumes:

• Static job roles
• Linear career progression
• One-size-fits-all training

But work today is structured by tasks and skills, not job titles.

What the data shows: Microsoft research confirms AI agents are already performing complex, high-impact tasks across organizations. Yet new hires are still met with outdated materials: job descriptions, generic training, and no guidance on managing autonomous systems.

What’s missing:
New talent needs to be equipped with:

• Task literacy
• Prompt fluency
• System design thinking
• Human-AI judgment

These aren’t advanced skills. They’re the new baseline. Treating AI as an add-on is no longer acceptable.

L&D Is Not Built for This Shift

The problem goes deeper than onboarding. The teams responsible for preparing people—Learning and Development—aren’t ready either.

Current state:

• Over 60% of L&D work is administrative and automatable
• Roles like LMS Admin and Training Coordinator are built around tasks with 80–90% automation potential
• These roles are sunsetting, but the L&D operating model hasn’t caught up

What’s emerging instead:

• Capability Architect – aligns learning with business strategy
• Skills Intelligence Partner – translates workforce data into action
• Learning Experience Designer – builds personalized, high-impact journeys
  
  

Until L&D retools around these roles and capabilities, it cannot equip new talent for the realities of AI-powered work. If L&D is still managing content libraries, it won’t help graduates manage agent teams.

Reimagining Onboarding for the AI-Ready Graduate

Today’s early talent is entering a workforce shaped by systems, not roles. Onboarding must evolve to reflect that. It’s no longer just about helping them “settle in.” It’s about equipping them to operate, audit, and lead in AI-integrated environments from day one.

Effective onboarding must now:

• Map out how work is structured—at the task and skill level
• Introduce where and how AI agents operate within those systems
• Clarify where human oversight is essential and how to exercise it
• Build fluency in navigating dynamic, AI-powered workflows
• Embed ethical decision-making into automation design and use

L&D must design onboarding as a living system, not a one-time event—connecting learning, automation, and performance in real time. Until that happens, new talent will continue walking into complexity unprepared.

The Cost of Doing Nothing

Failing to redesign onboarding means:

• Graduates enter roles they aren’t prepared for
• Skills don’t match the systems they’re expected to manage
• Engagement drops, potential is wasted, and AI investments underdeliver

This isn’t a tooling issue. It’s a talent issue.

If we expect graduates to lead in agent-powered systems, we must lead the transformation of how they’re prepared. That responsibility sits squarely with leadership, HR, and L&D.

We can’t keep preparing people for outdated work structures and expect them to thrive.

The work has changed.

Graduates know it.

Now leadership must act like it.

Siobhan 💜