2 top EY leaders explain why a lack of experience is a junior consultant's big advantage in the age of AI

• AI is taking over the work typically done by junior consultants.
• Inexperience could actually be a big benefit for new grads, two senior EY leaders told Business Insider.
• Without years of preconceived ideas, graduates are more likely to challenge the status quo, one said.

AI anxiety is hitting entry-level workers hardest. For those aiming for a consulting career, where junior staff historically built slide decks and crunched data, AI agents seem like an intimidating new competitor.

But two of EY's top consulting leaders say junior employees are a valuable asset for professional services firms in the AI age.

Lack of experience is what makes the youngest professionals at EY valuable, Dan Diasio, EY's global consulting AI leader, told Business Insider.

They arrive without a decade or more of assumptions about how work should be done — more of a blank sheet of paper. That allows them to challenge the status quo and rethink processes from first principles.

His advice for junior consultants at EY is to use that to their advantage: be bold, ask questions about the way things are done, and lean into the use of technology.

"If anything, as a young graduate, they've got more opportunity to change our organization," Errol Gardner, global head of consulting at the Big Four firm EY, told Business Insider. Junior consultants have the native digital skills and the creativity necessary for the AI era, he said.

Across the industry, consulting firms are racing to embed generative AI into their own workflows while advising clients on how to implement the technology. That shift is prompting a reassessment of hiring, with a new focus on engineering talent.

It's also raised questions about the traditional consulting pyramid model, which has long relied on teams of junior staff to perform research and prepare materials. If AI agents can complete much of that "assembly" work in seconds, what happens to entry-level roles?

Fellow Big Four firm PwC has reduced graduate hiring goals in the US, in part because of "the impact of AI," according to an internal presentation obtained by Business Insider last August.

At EY, Gardner said there has been "no material change" in graduate recruitment due to AI. The firm continues to hire to support growth in its consulting business, he said.

In its latest annual report, EY said it invests more than $1 billion annually in developing AI-first platforms and products, and AI-related revenue was up 30% in the firm's 2025 financial year.

Knowledge-workers are getting a 'bad rap'

Diasio, who is responsible for AI across EY's consulting business, added that knowledge-workers broadly, not just the young ones, are getting a bad rap amid the current AI narrative.

There is an idea that they're going to be replaced by AI, said Diasio, but AI without context, knowledge, and expertise, puts you down a path of "statistical sameness" and produces, as he put it, "polished slop."

He said we're in the early stages of an evolution of consultants' roles: "Our people are going to move more to being creators, creators of new business models, creators of new opportunities for our clients, creators of maybe new products."

"It's people and their creativity that lift the ceiling," he added.

While the tools consultants use are evolving rapidly, Gardner said the core objective of their job remains the same: delivering value to clients, developing clients' teams, working collaboratively to implement change, and pursuing learning and development.

That won't shift by 2030 — or even 2040, he argued. "As long as human beings are buying from human beings, there will continue to be difficulty in executing change and implementing technology," he said.

What will change is how the work gets done. Consultants will spend less time on what Gardner described as "assembly" work — pulling together presentations, drafting proposals, or synthesizing information — and more time interpreting insights and shaping outcomes.

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