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There’s no sugar-coating it: The job market for recent college graduates and new workforce entrants is, by some accounts, brutal. According to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the unemployment rate for college grads between the ages of 22 and 27 jumped to 5.6% as of December 2025. That’s the highest it’s been for the same month over the prior four years.
As companies continue to experiment with new forms of technology to automate tasks once delegated to entry-level staffers, younger workers might be finding it harder and harder to get their foot in the door.
But the problem, of course, goes both ways: Without a robust pipeline of eager young workers, finance teams may one day find themselves with no one to take over their jobs. With all that in mind, CFO.com recently posed this question to several finance chiefs: At a time when entry-level jobs are being increasingly automated, how are you thinking about succession planning? Their answers reveal a range of strategies for a complex problem.
“We’ve instituted a rotation plan within the finance group. An employee might spend 18 months in sales and commercial finance, then in FP&A, then in another aspect, so that our teams are always learning and growing. The advice that I give to people is that if you stop learning, then it’s probably time to move on. So, from a succession planning perspective, I’m trying to train staff to be the best possible employees and have the most rewarding work experience so that they don’t want to leave. And I’m also cross-training them, so that I don’t have this gaping hole in my infrastructure.
Thinking a little higher up on the org chart, I’ve got an SVP of finance and a couple of VPs of finance and accounting. I’m constantly trying to keep them challenged and educated through coaching and other outside programs. I’m also trying to keep them engaged. Not a week goes by that I don’t think about who’s going to sit in my seat. I want to make sure that they’re as successful in this seat as I’ve been. If they end up leaving, I want to ensure that wherever they go, they’re also successful.
We do incorporate a lot of AI and automation, but we’re not trying to replace people. We’re trying to get better data quicker so that we can make better decisions. We’re trying to put things in place so that we can scale.”
“From my perspective, the key is to encourage junior team members to use their own judgment and analytical skills instead of just doing routine tasks. I think the importance of that is only increasing. It once may have taken hours or days to pull data and generate reports, but much of that can be automated. The question is now: Can they be that first layer of critical thinking? How do I teach them to connect the dots and see how their decisions impact the business?
We also want to invest in mentorship and get employees exposed to cross-functional decision-making. We want to build that strategic thinking skill set early on.
Automation is changing how we think about things in finance and what entry-level finance jobs look like. It’s certainly an evolution, but it’s not happening overnight.”
“If you look back at folks you’ve worked with and they have not leveled up in their career, you have not done your job as a leader. Everyone you’ve worked with should have a path upward.
When it comes to junior-level jobs, we need to make sure junior staff have the right context to do their jobs. One of the reasons senior-level finance leaders can use AI is because they have context. They can look at something and know if something is right or wrong, or whether a piece of software is hallucinating and making things up. What I’m thinking about now is how I can embed that knowledge in our junior staff.
I don’t ever see junior staff roles going away, but I think the work will be slightly different.”
“We actually went through a formal succession planning process last year, and it’s now a living, breathing document. As part of that, we do an annual talent review where the executive team sits down together and discusses all of our direct reports in an open forum. Everyone has visibility into strengths, development areas and where there may be gaps, as well as who could potentially step into key roles over time.
It’s something our CHRO has really been pushing, and it’s worked rather well. It creates alignment across the leadership team, so we’re not thinking about talent in silos. We all have a shared understanding of where the bench is strong and where we need to invest more in development.
I always use the analogy of, ‘What happens if someone wins the lottery tomorrow?’ It’s not chiseled in stone, but we at least have a rough outline of what happens next. We’ve already had those conversations, so if something unexpected happens, we’re not starting from scratch. It’s about reducing uncertainty and making sure there’s continuity in how the organization operates.”
“I usually joke about it as, ‘If I get run over by a bus,’ though in Austin, there aren’t that many buses, so I feel relatively safe. But yes, we do think about succession planning, and for me, it really starts with the process.
A lot of what finance, accounting, HR and legal teams do happens on a regular cadence, whether it’s closing the books, managing compliance or supporting day-to-day operations. If those processes are well defined and embedded in the organization, then the work continues regardless of who is in a particular role. That significantly reduces key-person risk.
It’s also about having strong leaders across each function. I’m fortunate to have people on my team who manage their areas day to day and understand the details of how things operate. That creates resilience.
So, if something unexpected happens, it’s not a situation where everything stops because one person isn’t there. The systems, processes and team structure keep things moving, and that, to me, is a very practical way to think about succession planning.”
“I started with the company in an analyst role and worked my way up to CFO, and several members of my leadership team have followed similar paths, starting as analysts or managers and growing into VP-level roles. That kind of internal progression is really important when you think about succession planning, because it builds leaders who understand the business from multiple angles and over time.
For me, succession planning is less about a static plan and more about development. A big part of my role is making sure those leaders have full transparency into what’s happening across the organization, not just the decisions, but why those decisions are being made. Understanding the ‘why’ is what helps people grow into future leadership roles.
We meet as a leadership team every week for an open discussion on performance, trends and key issues. I also bring context from our executive team meetings, what was presented, what decisions were made and the reasoning behind them. That exposure helps people connect the dots across the business.
The more people understand where the organization is headed and why, the more prepared they are to step into larger roles. That ongoing communication and development is really what builds a strong succession pipeline.”
“It never really comes up at the executive level. We’ve talked about succession planning more broadly, and within the past few months, we rolled out an HR tool that includes a succession planning module. But we’re primarily using that for store-level roles, general managers and assistant general managers, where having a clear pipeline is more operationally critical.
Our executive team is a very small group, and in startup-type environments like this, there’s just a lot of chaos. The focus is on running the business day to day, managing growth and dealing with constant change. There isn’t much time to sit back and say, ‘What’s the succession plan?’ It’s just not something that becomes a priority.
In my experience, across my last few roles in similar environments, that’s pretty typical. Succession planning at the top tends to be informal, if it exists at all, because the business is moving so quickly. As the organization matures, you start to see more structure, but early on, execution takes precedence.”
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