Skip to navigationSkip to main contentSkip to right columnADVERTISEMENTClay HaltonSat, June 13, 2026 at 12:30 PM GMT+2 4 min readArtificial intelligence has become one of the biggest sources of anxiety for workers entering the job market.According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 (1), 41% of employers plan to reduce their workforce by 2030 as AI automates certain tasks. Meanwhile, venture firm SignalFire reported (2) that Big Tech companies hired fewer recent graduates in 2024 than they did before the pandemic, suggesting entry-level opportunities may already be shrinking.Must ReadRobert Kiyosaki says this 1 asset will surge 400% in a year and begs investors not to miss this ‘explosion’The ultra-rich use these 5 real estate strategies to build wealth while they sleep — you can start with just $100Millionaires under 43 are reshaping investing — just 25% of their portfolios are in stocks. Here’s where their money is goingEven so, not everyone sees AI as a threat.Jiaona Zhang, chief product officer at AI timekeeping company Laurel and an adjunct lecturer at Stanford University, believes AI is creating an entirely new career path that could become one of the most valuable jobs for young professionals. She calls it the “AI workflows” role."I think every company should be hiring for this," Zhang told Business Insider (3). "That's the role I'd really push every single new grad to be going into."What is an “AI workflows” role?According to Zhang, the role involves finding areas inside a company that can be improved with AI, then building or implementing systems that make those improvements real.That could mean helping a sales team automate cold emails, setting up AI agents to prepare demo calls or creating internal tools that save employees hours of administrative work.“If you could start proving to everyone in the world that you’ve saved a group of people this much time and you created this much leverage, that is the way to scream your worth to every employer out there,” Zhang told Business Insider.At Laurel, Zhang said a recent graduate hired into this kind of position built an AI agent that acts like a personal chief of staff for salespeople. The employee became “the most celebrated person” at the company, she said, and Laurel has since expanded its AI Ops team.The idea is already showing up elsewhere. Box recently advertised an “AI business automation engineer” role with a salary range of $146,500 to $183,000. CEO Aaron Levie described (4) it as similar to a forward-deployed engineer for internal business functions and said he expects most companies to have versions of the role going forward.Terms and Privacy PolicyPrivacy & Cookie SettingsMore Info