Austin's Thoughts

More media coverage!

Check out these two great stories published about MyFirstPaycheck | Jobs for Teens last week!

This article in the Main Line Times was on the front page and looked awesome, and this one by Danielle Builta, was published in the local Quad Cities paper, pretty cool huh!

Every mention helps and we're thrilled that people are as excited about the positive impact MyFirstPaycheck | Jobs for Teens has had on teen employment as we are.

MyFirstPaycheck | Jobs for Teens has already helped many teens find jobs, are you one of them?

 

Thanks Jane!

Another great shout out from another great blog, check it out!

Seven Deadly Interview Sins from Forbes.com

Forbes.com recently published Seven Deadly Interview Sins. Most of this advice is aimed at people applying for higher level jobs, but the information is still applicable. I particularly like this part,

"One of the most popular reasons for a quick rejection is cursing. "The F-bomb gets dropped regularly when I ask candidates about their former supervisors," says Campbell's Massey.

Meghan Lantier, an account supervisor at the public relations firm Bliss, Gouverneur and Associates, sympathizes with Massey. When she interviewed a recent graduate of an Ivy League university for an entry-level position two years ago, she asked a typical question: Tell me what it was like working at your most recent internship.

"He started talking about a former boss and said, 'That fu**ing guy I was working with … ' "My mouth dropped open and I couldn't believe this was happening. It was like an episode out of The Office.""

I hope you know not to curse, but also, don't ever, ever, ever badmouth a former boss or company. It doesn't reflect well on you at all.

Take a Bite - Will Mon's Blog

Will is a friend of mine from college who has a great blog called 'Take a Bite,' that covers a lot of interesting tech topics. But this weekend, Will wrote about myfirstpaycheck.com!
Check it out!
Also, check out this Etch-a-Sketch thing he did, pretty neat huh?

A society page write-up

Thanks Exponent!

" To get a good job, get a good education? How about combining them both with a great payoff. That's what Celeste, 16 and a soph at Lower Merion High School, and bro Austin Lavin, 23, have done by creating myfirstpaycheck.com, listed as a "job-posting Web site for teens by teens." Good work -- really, good work -- if you can get it, and these two got it!"

An interesting school program

This article in the Indy Star profiles the new Providence Cristo Rey High School which is based around a strong work-study component where students spend a day a week working in corporate offices across the city, earning the money that pays for about three-quarters of their tuition.
"The teens do clerical and office work normally done by adults in companies such as Ice Miller, AIT Laboratories and Eli Lilly and Co."
According to the article this method has led to a great deal of success, the school claims that "Other Cristo Rey schools in most disadvantaged neighborhoods in the country boast that 96 percent of their students go to college and say that only 6 percent of their students have ever dropped out."
More proof that it is beneficial to put high school students to work, and an interesting model for making it happen.

Venture Capital Firms Set Their Sights on New Ideas -- Not New Technologies

Knowledge @ Wharton (a great site) has an article examining the differences between companies based on great ideas, and those based on great technology. Myfirstpaycheck.com is definitely a good idea, we bought our most complicated programing form combtail.com.
Does that mean we'll succeed? I sure hope so.

Woo-hoo teenagers!

From the NYTIMES, "The nation’s high school seniors performed significantly better on the first nationwide economics test than they did on other recent national exams in history and science, and demonstrated higher than expected understanding of basic market forces like supply and demand than officials expected."

The article points out that students did better with economical logic then the terminology of economics and the actual way that financial systems work... I almost don't know how to respond to this, of course people are going to have a better grasp of things that they deal with on a daily basis. I didn't take the quiz but from the two example questions the article uses to make this point, I'm surprised the difference isn't more varied then 80%/21%

The article highlights, "a question that asked students to identify the most likely effect of an increase in the hourly wage of baby sitters. Eighty percent of students answered correctly that the time spent by teenagers on baby sitting would likely go up, whereas time they spent on other activities would decrease, he said.

But on a multiple-choice question that asked students to identify one of the policy tools of the Federal Reserve, only 21 percent chose the correct answer, “buying and selling government securities.” Thirty-seven percent incorrectly chose “increasing or decreasing government spending,” and 31 percent chose “raising or lowering income taxes,” he said.

“This means that students haven’t learned that Congress and the president determine federal spending,” Mr. Damasio said."

Some cool press coverage for myfirstpaycheck.com

Thank you Citizen Mom! We got a nice little write up on Amy's blog that has been greatly appreciated. She does some great things on her site (beside spreading the word about myfirstpaycheck.com) and you should check it out.

Teens star in efforts to build work force

Another good teen work program, this one in Worcester, Mass. The program this year has placed about 600 city youths in part-time jobs that match their interests. Participating employers range from hospitals to nonprofit groups to insurance companies to colleges.
Highlights from the Worcester Telegram & Gazette article,

"Advocates say youth employment programs make sense. Employing teenagers helps them stay busy and pocket some cash during the summer lull. Jobs also keep teens off the streets and make them less likely to get in trouble. The broader goal of training teenagers is to make sure they stay in the work force when they complete their education."

"“We’re hoping that it does create a pathway for kids to move upward in their life,” said Jill C. Dagilis, executive director of the Worcester Community Action Council. “We’re hoping they’ll stay here and work here. Those are good outcomes that we are certainly striving for.”"

" Many teens in the summer jobs program have never entered a workplace and are unfamiliar with office etiquette. This can be challenging for employers as well as employees. So the students are required to attend a 10-hour pre-employment “boot camp,” where they learn what’s appropriate and what isn’t."

Zit's Cartoon

Teen Summer Employment

Blog, Division of Labour, has a post about the reasons behind the decrease in summer employment for teens. E. Frank Stephenson takes issue with the idea that increased competition is the cause, and instead blames the decrease in number of teens working on the increase in family wealth.
I can't say I disagree with this hypothesis, but it seems like he brushes off the amount of increased competition too quickly. I don't have statistics that can prove either argument, but I can imagine the ability for business owners to bring in foreign teenagers who can work longer for less, does make it harder for an American teen to find work.
Either way, I think the thing for teens to take away from this conversation is that there are jobs out there for you, but you have to be aggressive in your search and flexible in what you are willing to do.

Bob Herbert Column

Blogger, The Unknown Candidate posted a June 16th Bob Herbert column from The New York Times.  A great piece about the Northeastern University labor study that found, "the national teen employment rate averaged only 33.1 percent, tying for the lowest employment rate in the past 60 years."
Herbert writes,

A steady job could make all the difference. Along with the paycheck comes a sense of the possibilities. Kids develop a clearer understanding of the value of education and are more likely to stay in school. The heightened sense of self-worth that comes from gainful employment can be a bulwark against negative peer pressure. Contacts are made and a work history established.

"The more you work today, the more you're going to work tomorrow," said Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies. "And the more you work while you're in school, the easier it is to transition to the labor market when you graduate."

It seems obvious that we should be putting as many young people to work as possible, but the opposite is happening. The youth labor market in the U.S. has all but collapsed. Teens were especially hard hit by the recession that followed the employment boom of the late 1990s, and there has been no substantial recovery in the teen job market since then.

Years ago the federal government played a major role in bolstering job opportunities for teenagers. There was substantial bipartisan support for both year-round and summer employment programs. But that important commitment vanished with the conservative onslaught of recent years.

The result was inevitable. As the center has reported, "Far fewer youth across the nation are gaining exposure to the job market and to the real world of work than in the late 1980s and 1990s."

What you are left with are frustrated youngsters, full of energy but lacking appropriate outlets, who have trouble figuring out what to do with themselves. It's an environment that is all but guaranteed to spawn bad choices.

... I couldn't agree more

Good News

Some good news from The Wall Street Journal by way of The Chicago Tribune, " The chances of landing a summer job—be it a paid internship or a stint as a drive-in carhop—are brighter this year than last, despite predictions of a slowdown in the economy."
The article also mentions the way teenagers are using new technology (hopefully soon myfirstpaycheck.com too) to find jobs, "In recent years, it has become easier to find a specific job as such sites have proliferated. At the same time, more employers are posting on established sites such as Craigslist.org, and young job hunters are notifying each other of job openings through social-networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, said Trudy Steinfeld, executive director of the New York University Wasserman Center for Career Development."

Articles on Teen Jobs

A few years ago, I worked as a reporter for The Canton Repository. I was just going through some old articles that I wrote and found two that I thought would be appropriate for myfirstpaycheck.com's forum on teenage employment.

The first is an article I wrote about a work program for middle school students. I was able to talk with 20 students who completed a program created by Stephanie Patrick, principal of Hartford Middle School. The students made minimum wage doing manual labor in the schools, and they were all thrilled for the opportunity. They were able to earn some money, learn some life lessons, and stay busy during the summer. Kids and Teenagers aren't lazy like some people suppose, they are just rarely given the opportunity to work. This is one of the reasons we created myfirstpaycheck.com, hopefully we'll be able to connect students with opportunities that they might have missed on their own.

Here is another article I wrote about teenage employment. It's about a nationwide poll released a few years ago by Junior Achievement Worldwide, an organization dedicated to educating young people about business, that said for the first time in six years, paying for college is the main reason most young people work.  Why do you work?

I also was able to meet two young entrepreneurs in my time in Canton, Alex Haas and Amjed “Chops” Samad, who both saw needs and started their own restaurants when they were in their early twenties. They taught themselves, and hopefully others, that it is possible to strike out on your own and make an impact when you're young.  I hope you go for it too if you see a potential need that you can figure out how to fill.

Few teenagers earn greenbacks with lawn-cutting jobs

A good AP story, about lawn-mowing and other teenage jobs.

"The number of teenagers offering lawn-mowing services are definitely small, according to Junior Achievement, which surveys teens across the U.S. about their summer job plans. Only 6.2 percent of those surveyed this year plan to cut lawns during the summer. That's a slight uptick over the past two years (5.3 percent in 2006 and 4.4 percent in 2005), but still a fraction of those seeking work.

Today's teenagers are most likely to choose retail, office or restaurant jobs to earn their summer spending money, says Darrell Luzzo, senior vice president of education at Junior Achievement. And they're mindful of developing their resumes for college and future job hunting as they choose those jobs."

I think this is a same, my first job was mowing lawns and I thought it was great. I was able to gain experience, earn some cash, while being outside, and maintaining flexible hours. And it's a good life skill, I still mow my parents lawn!

The most impressive part of this article is the story of Corey Welk who was able to turn mowing a few lawns into a legitimate business, see it's not that hard. Keep it up Corey.

After a Successful Interview, It's Your Turn to Ask Questions

To build on what Celeste has been talking about on her site, I wanted to post this article from the Washington Post about accepting a job. It's geared towards 20-year-olds, but I think most of it is applicable to everybody.
It's exciting to get a job offer, but make sure you ask yourself

How stable is the organization?

What are the benefits?

How's the commute?

Do I click with my new boss and colleagues?

What will this job teach you?

What comes next?

If it doesn't make job, don't feel pressured to take it. There will be other jobs that are better fits, but think of your friends - maybe one of them will be a better fit for the company!

Jobs in Politics

According to the site Madison for Edwards, He said, "Suppose we create a million new stepping stone jobs so that kids who are having trouble getting work, chronically out of work, we can put them to work in our parks, in our libraries, in public work, so that they can have a job, so that they can develop a work ethic. There's so much good to be done out there" at recent campaign event.
This isn't an endorsement of Edwards, but it is great to hear the Presidential candidates discuss the issue of teenage employment. There is a lot of wasted energy out there, and a lot of need. We have an inefficient system and it would be great if the government could create the jobs, and the programs necessary to fill them. But until that happens, myfirstpaycheck.com is going to have to fill the void and connect teens to jobs. Wish us luck!

A highlight of internship opportunities

Reid Kanaley highlights a few websites to go for information about internships in Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer.

Most of the sites are for business owners, but he lists studentjobs.gov, the "one-stop portal for a range of emploment opportunities for students within the Federal Government, whether in high school, college, or graduate school."

This is one of the best employment sites I've seen. It's well-designed, easy-to-use, and it seems that there are tons of jobs avavailable in the government, but it appears that the title student jobs is misleading, and that the search option has no filter for age appropriate job listings for teenagers. That's too bad, I wonder what kind of opportunities there really are to work for the government as a high schooler.

Why teens have a tough time finding summer work

A great article by Mark Trumbull, passed on to me by friend Brian about the shrinking job market for teenagers. It highlights many of the issues we have touched on before; more competition for jobs, less interest from employers, cut funding for federal work programs.  But it elaborates on these issues and makes some other important points.

This whole article is a must read but some highlights.

"How do you learn [to work]? You spend time in the workplace," says Andrew Sum, an economist at Northeastern University in Boston. "Fewer kids are getting serious work experience during their high school years."

Consider one measure of the youth labor market, the share of 16- to 19-year-olds who are employed each July. Typically this number, as tracked by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics since 1948, has reached above 50 percent. But the ratio began falling in 1998, dipped below 50 percent in 2002, and has spent the past four summers below 45 percent.

The pattern in summer is echoed year round. As of May, for example, the same ratio of employment to population stood at a six-decade low of 34.6 percent, after an adjustment for seasonal fluctuations.

The trend is partly a story of changing choices by teens and their parents. Many, especially in upper- or middle-class neighborhoods, have decided that academic or volunteer activities may look better on college applications.

A newly passed rise in the federal minimum wage, which takes effect in July, will make employers think twice before opening a position for unskilled help, many economists say. These economists don't necessarily see the minimum wage as bad policy, but some say government subsidies are needed to help young people connect to the world of work.

Ample Jobs, but Youths are Choosy

A good article in the New York Times about summer employment. Barbara Whitaker makes the point that there are often jobs out there, they just not might be what you originally sought. I think you have to be willing to be flexible though, especially when it comes to your first job and you don't quite have the resume yet to in high demand.... it reminds me of a conversation Celeste and I are having.

Welcome, teens, to the work world

Marion Callahan wrote about the inexperience of teenagers in the workplace for Phillyburbs.com. She writes, "Some don't have a clue what a real job involves," but I think she's a little hard on first time employees. Who doesn't have embarassing stories about their first job?

Employers always take a risk when they hire someone, young or old. But there are advantages to hiring teenagers, and it's not just the lower cost.

One thing the article brings up, which I've found in my personal experience is the widespread usage of non-professional business email addresses. If you think your email address is iffy, create another one with your whole name, or first initial and last name. Creating a new account is free through most email providers, and if you really don't want to give up your old email account, you can easily setup a forwarding system.

Summer Employment Columns

As the summer comes around, many newspapers are running stories and columns about the importance of summer jobs for teenagers and the difficulty in obtaining them. 
The Mayor of Boston writes in The Boston Globe, "Without exception, successful adults can easily recall their first summer job and the life lessons they learned. Research confirms that early work experience really matters. Students who learn the habits of paid work early are more likely to stay in school, go on to higher education, and earn more in their early 20s and beyond.
In addition to the paycheck, summer jobs provide an opportunity to learn about the education required for various careers and to connect with adults who have made the choices necessary to succeed."
Marc H. Morial, the president and chief executive officer of The National Urban League while focusing on inner-cities touches on the same theme and writes in a column picked up across the country, "What happens when too many youths have nothing to do all summer? They get into trouble. They join gangs, they take drugs and they get pregnant. Even if they manage to stay out of trouble, they miss opportunities to gain skills to lift them out of the projects through college and into a promising future."

The Bridges Program

In the June 6th issue of The Philadelphia Inquirer, columnist Monica Yant Kinney wrote a great article about The Bridges Program. While we might not all be from "far-flung zip codes in the gritty city," I think she made two points that are applicable to young people everywhere. First, jobs are important, and secondly, teenagers have no idea how to get them, or how to act once they land their first job.
The Bridges Program focuses on teaching teenagers life skills and shows them how these are applicable to the workforce. I particularly liked the girl who learned to "banish "ax" for "ask.""
Myfirstpaycheck.com understands that jobs are important, and we understand that finding a job is not a natural skill for most people. And while myfirstpaycheck.com is not going to walk you through the job search and employment process step-by-step like The Bridges Program, we will be a great resource for those proactive enough to come and find us.

Uh-Oh

Thanks to George Lenard who used his blog to alert us about a recent study from the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University predicting historic low teen employment rates for this summer, despite job growth for older adults.

I haven’t had a chance to read the report yet, but I agree with George that first jobs are important! I just wish our site was up and running so he could have gone to us with questions and not our competitors.