Digitas’s Jacob Bjornson: every senior was once given the time and space to be a junior

Jacob Bjornson, Junior Strategist at Digitas

My prediction for the next few years may not be the most optimistic, as I think starting out in creative industries will get harder, while the expectations placed on junior talent will get higher.

Economic pressure, mergers and layoffs are already making entry-level opportunities feel further away. At the same time, the “Senior + AI” model is increasingly being touted as the future: fewer people, more experience, amplified by technology.

The contradiction is that those seniors only became seniors because somebody once gave them the time and space to be juniors.

Juniors need consistent feedback and room to make mistakes. Employers understandably want them to be billable to clients as quickly as possible. As opportunities become more competitive, I think people starting out will increasingly be expected to close some of that experience gap themselves.

AI can be very useful for making work better, faster. But when you’re under pressure to make something more “client-facing”, it’s also tempting to let it do the difficult thinking for you. The output may look better, but have you actually improved along with it?

On the flip side, for the first time ever, you have a personal mentor sitting in your pocket, available 24/7. You can ask it to challenge your thinking, critique your work, explain something you don’t understand or teach you a vital technical skill. Used in the right way, that could rapidly improve how fast you can learn.

So I think an important skill will be learning to use AI as a sparring partner rather than outsourcing your brain to it, something I’m still figuring out myself.

I also think employers have a massive part to play in all this. If developing juniors feels too expensive, part of the answer needs to be making that development more effective and efficient, because it’s never been optimal, feedback depends on senior availability, work that’s had weeks spent on it can get glanced over, and client pressures often make mentorship an afterthought.

Could AI help fill some of those gaps? Maybe agencies could develop customised AI training solutions around their own skills, clients and ways of working, giving juniors more opportunities to practise and get feedback when human mentorship isn’t available. Done well, this could help juniors build skills and contribute to client work sooner, without every learning moment depending on a senior’s calendar. That could make investing in junior talent a stronger business decision, rather than a cost that’s hard to justify.

Overall, I think its unfair to put the onus on juniors to just “be better”, I think its also in agencies’ best interest to find better ways to make it more worthwhile to develop them.