Hired Teens: AI-coded site for high-school jobs that keeps a human touch
Lucas Nickelsburg is the founder of Hired Teens, a job board focused on high-school roles and specialized internships. He used AI to build the site’s mechanics while keeping writing and relationship work human, a practical approach to speed development without losing a personable user experience.
Use AI to handle repetitive technical or administrative work so you can move faster, but keep customer-facing content and relationship-building human; that mix allowed Hired Teens to launch with a smooth site and a personal feel.
What’s the quick origin story of your business, and what makes what you do genuinely different from the other options your customers are looking at?
I was researching summer jobs and internships for students like me, and found that there was no one place where teenagers could look for those kinds of opportunities. I created Hired Teens to fill that blind spot in the recruitment space. The platform’s focus on high school opportunities – both standard jobs and specialized internships – sets us apart from other job boards.
Where does most of your new business come from today, and where do you wish it came from?
As I’m building my business, I’m personally reaching out to employers to build connections. In the future, I’d like more of my business to come from search engines without needing to build the entire network myself.
What’s one thing you’ve actually handed over to AI in the last year, and one thing you tried it on and went back to doing the human way?
Once I came up with the idea for the site, I spent a significant amount of time learning basic programming, but after a couple months, I realized it would probably take over a year to build the features I needed with a good UI. For that reason, I handed the coding of the mechanics of my website to AI while I handled the writing. That way, the website runs smoothly and looks appealing without the user experience feeling impersonal.
Have you noticed a change in how customers find you or what they already know before they reach out? Is anyone arriving through AI assistants like ChatGPT yet?
No one has arrived through AI assistants yet, though I could see that change happening down the line, especially because teenagers are more likely to use AI for basic searches instead of Google.
If you were advising someone in your industry on all of this for the next 12 months, what would you tell them to actually do, and what would you tell them to ignore?
I would recommend using AI to reduce the amount of time spent on the menial work of HR tech, but to keep a human element somewhere in their service to build stronger relationships with job seekers and recruiters alike.
Thank you to Lucas Nickelsburg and the team at Hired Teens for sharing what actually worked with Leaders Perception readers.
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