By Joey Bunag—

Last February, I decided to start an endeavor that I had never seen before, a project that would take nearly five months to complete and one that would become one of my largest summer achievements: I began building an internship-finding app specifically for high school students. 

Previously, the internship-seeking process had been an extremely difficult one for me. Many of the top Google search results included pay-to-play programs, with absurd prices reaching up to thousands of dollars. Other internships often required connections and were thus limited in their scope of applicants. And, if I were to find cheap internships that are open to all high school students, they often required hours of surfing the Internet, buried underneath college internships for which I was not eligible. 

However, my experience is far from unique — finding suitable internships has proven to be difficult for students all across the country. According to researchers from the American Student Assistance, only 2% of high school students have held an internship. Yet, internships have been proven to be beneficial in determining interests and career paths, with 79% of past interns stating that their internships helped them discern their unique skills and interests. 

Noticing this disparity, I first pitched my internship-finding app, HighschoolHires, for my 2023 French Midterm project. With encouragement and support from Madame Gino-Saliba, I soon began working on the app itself. Through countless hours of watching web development tutorials on YouTube and several more months creating test projects on Bubble, my app development platform, I eventually launched it in June. HighschoolHires functions as a job board, where organizations that I partner with can post their internship openings for students to apply. These internships are then filtered by category and location, providing easy accessibility to internships suited specifically for students’ interests. Many of the internship opportunities on HighschoolHires are free or low cost, widening the scope of potential applicants and providing all students with a fair chance at gaining quality professional experience. 

Personally, the app is important for me because I share many students’ frustrations. Being a student with a strong interest in finance, I naturally sought internships within this specific field. Yet, finance internships are incredibly difficult to find without ample time or connections, oftentimes causing me to settle for internships in areas where I had markedly less interest, such as marketing. By vetting and providing easy access to a diverse set of employment opportunities, I hope to give all students a fair chance to have the experiences that I struggled so desperately to find.

Currently, HighschoolHires has received fiscal sponsorship and partnered with over 100 organizations, providing internships related to business, computer science, media, government, medicine and engineering. Some of our most notable partners include NASA, The National Archives, The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, George Washington University and the University of Maryland at College Park. Those interested in the app can access it here, and any questions can be directed to me at [email protected].