Cisco Exec Says Entry-Level Hiring Slowdown Is a ‘Total Blip’

The job market for entry-level workers has been bleak recently — but Cisco’s chief people, policy, and purpose officer said that won’t be the case long-term.

“I think it’s a total blip,” Francine Katsoudas told Business Insider. “I don’t think it’s lasting.”

She said Cisco understands the importance of attracting the next generation of talent and that recent grads have experiences, skills, and lessons that are applicable in the workplace.

Katsoudas’ prediction for the future of entry-level workers comes as tech-industry leaders, like Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, have warned that entry-level white-collar jobs will be slashed in half in the next five years. Geoffrey Hinton, known as the “Godfather of AI,” has similarly said that AI will replace anyone doing “mundane intellectual labor,” specifically calling out paralegals and call-center workers.

Recent data also casts a dark cloud on the prospects for entry-level workers. A Stanford study published in August found that employment for 22-25-year-olds in the most AI-exposed occupations have seen a 13% relative decline. Handshake similarly reported that tech internship postings were down 30% since 2023.

Not all research points to the same conclusion, though.

Another report from Handshake suggested that roles considered to be more exposed to AI actually fell in line with a broader decrease in entry-level jobs on the platform.

Meanwhile, some companies have been growing opportunities for younger talent. Cybersecurity giant Cloudflare recently announced a major expansion of its internship program from roughly 60 people to over 1,000, and McKinsey has shared plans to hire more junior-level workers.

AI is affecting some entry-level positions

Even if companies still recognize the value of hiring early talent, Katsoudas said that entry-level jobs are still facing a challenging moment.

“I think what’s happening at the moment is that there are places at the entry-level where AI is impacting the work,” Katsoudas said.

She said Cisco’s Contact Center, where Katsoudas began her career 29 years ago, is a great example of that. The division has grown from a traditional call center, where agents made or accepted customer calls, into a platform that allows customers to interact when and how they choose.

“We have about 1.5 million cases that used to be handled by people that are now being handled by AI quite effectively,” Katsoune said.

However, the executive added that human workers have a “second-level role” in the Contact Center that is “more important now,” because they handle the more complex cases that the first-line AI support can’t solve.

“What you’re going to see is companies like Cisco work really hard to ensure that talent coming in is now prepared for level two,” Katsoune said.

The executive said that before she creates a job posting, she assesses how the work has changed and sees whether there are adjacent jobs that could come together. In general, Katsoudas said there’s a lot of “studying” of AI in the workplace right now, and that’s likely leading to some hesitation in hiring.

“But I think it’s absolutely short-term,” Katsoudas said.