Senior Will Hodge starts his 2013 Ford Fusion. The air is quiet and his leather seats have not yet seen the heat of the day. A short car ride is all that stands between this 17-year-old and his full time job at Tyson Foods.

“I get to work at 8 a.m. and do anything that my managers want me to do, anything from using the Tyson database, to find employees, to pulling useful information out of an Excel document,” Hodge said.

Hodge, a senior at the Don Tyson School of Innovation, feels his school played a role in his landing his job.

“My school, DTSOI, promoted this internship on the school website. After I signed up, I got the interview and now I’m here…The only prerequisite to apply for this internship is you must be in high school, but Tyson puts a lot of consideration towards G.P.A, work experience and interview quality before hiring,” Hodge said.

Luke Faupell, Application Development Intern for J.B Hunt and Fayetteville High class of 2019 graduate, shares similar experience. Faupell’s involvement with J.B. Hunt came as quite a change of pace.

“I knew several people that were working here and had nothing but positive things to say, and I saw a job posting so I applied. I’ve been here since March of 2019,” Faupell said.

“Before working here, I worked at Raising Cane’s the previous summer. I definitely see software development as a career since it is one of the fastest growing jobs. On top of that, I really enjoy the problem solving that goes into creating and deploying an application,” Faupell said.

Jackson Heck, Fayetteville High class of 2019 graduate, worked as a tech department intern for six weeks in the summer.

“I first found out about this internship through my computer science teacher at Fayetteville High School and then got in contact with the CIO Stuart Scott,” Heck said. “In the future I would love to have a job like this as a career.”

Principal Paul Griep provides some insight into Har-Ber’s job acquisition programs.

“As of today, we have over 20 community partners that have committed three years to build relationships and to mentor our students,” Dr. Greip said.

In a survey conducted by Millennial Branding, 50% of the employers surveyed created internship programs specifically for high school students as of 2014.

House coordinator Angie Anderson links students with the workforce at Har-Ber. “Dr. Griep has asked me to work on finding career mentors for every sophomore advisory this year… I ask a lot of people,” Anderson said.

“Because our houses are so varied, we try to find mentors that would fit

[each] house.”

According to Anderson, Har-Ber High  is the only school engaging in community partnership.

Team lead at JB Hunt Stephanie Muller said “This last summer 15% of our interns were in high school – we had 12 high schoolers of 70 total interns… I think they have a bright future ahead of them at J.B. Hunt.”