The Jobs at High Risk of Obsolescence in 12, 24 and 36 Months

A lot has been made about AI Agents replacing the jobs of normal people. Six months ago I would have scoffed at the idea — like an Essendon supporter scoffs at offers for Zach Merrett, but with AI automation becoming more mainstream by the week, it is a reality many organisations will be facing in the immediate future.

So what's changed? It usually takes a perfect storm of events for something to happen, and in this case I believe it is three factors: The release of OpenAI's AgentKit which dramatically increases the ease at which to create automations (albeit without the full on customisation features), Perplexity's Comet browser launch which takes the next step in web-browsing with features such as automated online reservation, search and bookings, and finally a general increase in the level of AI education amongst professionals since the turn of the year.

Many organisations are ready to take the plunge into the automation of specific roles but lack the workforce architecture planning support required to adapt.

This will happen eventually, in the meantime these are the roles at greatest risk of obsolescence in the next twelve months:

• Administrative Assistants — calendar management, meeting scheduling, basic correspondence
• Data Entry Clerks — manual database updating, form digitization
• Junior Market Researchers — competitor monitoring, basic survey compilation, trend reports
• CRM Administrators — contact list maintenance, basic segmentation, routine updates
• Accounts Payable Clerks — invoice processing, payment scheduling, basic reconciliation
• Social Media Content Coordinators (template-based) — scheduling posts from templates, basic caption writing
• First-line Help Desk Technicians — password resets, common software troubleshooting
• Junior Copywriters (template-driven) — product descriptions, standardized email campaigns

The next wave of roles is more interesting because it's not about elimination, it's about bifurcation. Business analysts won't disappear; they'll split into strategic interpreters worth keeping and data compilers who aren't. Sales development reps will separate into relationship builders and AI workflow supervisors:

• Business Analysts — moving from data compilation to strategic interpretation
• Project Coordinators — shifting from task tracking to stakeholder orchestration
• Sales Development Representatives — evolving from cold outreach to relationship cultivation
• Customer Success Managers — transitioning from issue resolution to strategic account planning
• HR Generalists/Recruiters — moving from resume screening to cultural alignment assessment
• Financial Analysts (junior-to-mid) — shifting from report generation to scenario modeling oversight
• Marketing Coordinators — evolving from campaign execution to strategic channel optimization
• Operations Managers — transitioning from process monitoring to workflow architecture design

The real shift isn't AI replacing humans — it's organisations restructuring around skills rather than positions. Once budget discussions evolve from 'we need three more headcount' to 'what's our optimal human-AI mix?', the game's over for these roles. When companies reorganise around what AI does efficiently versus what requires human judgment, these roles will be disaggregated.

Whether this creates opportunities to upskill into more fulfilling roles or just creates unemployment with better branding remains the uncomfortable question nobody's answering honestly. Ask me again in 18 months.

Has this started happening at your company? We'd love to know!