Millennials looking for work can be found between a rock and a hard place.
They make up 40 percent of America’s unemployed, the highest percentage of America’s unemployed workforce, and the competition for jobs is fierce. Not only do millennials have to compete against older and more experienced job applicants, but now they’re also up against high school prodigies like Michael Sayman.
Sayman, 17, still has braces. He also has Facebook groveling at his feet.
After the Miami teenager developed a popular mobile game using Facebook software, the company e-mailed him about flying him out to meet CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Sayman initially thought it was a prank. Not only was it not a prank, but it led to a cushy internship with Facebook this summer.
Sayman’s story is emblematic of a larger tech-industry trend. Big companies are so eager to lure young talent to Silicon Valley, they aren’t waiting for kids to start college or graduate high school. As Bloomberg reports, LinkedIn started a high-school internship program 2 years ago; Airbnb Inc., a start-up that matches renters with lodgers, has hired interns who are as young as 16; and now Facebook has begun hiring interns the summer before they start college.
To attract the precocious techies, companies are pulling out all the stops, including an enviable pay check. Engineering interns can rake in $6,000 per month, which is more than the average monthly income for U.S. households. Other internship perks include free concerts by A-list musicians (Microsoft), flights for parents to visit the company (Dropbox), on-site massages and laundry service (Google), and free on-site haircuts and food (Facebook).
If millennials want to beat out this younger crowd and land flashy tech jobs, they might have some serious catching up to do. Sayman taught himself how to make mobile apps at age 13, after a foreclosure made it difficult for his parents to pay the bills.
