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How is your company communicating with Gen Z in the workplace? Born between 1995 and 2012, Gen Z makes up almost a quarter of the U.S. population and is on track to be the most diverse generation in U.S. history. Right now, the oldest Gen Z person is 30 years old, and the youngest is 13!

Even with this 17-year age gap, there are similarities across the generation when it comes to what they want in the workplace — with stability, social impact, and diversity & inclusion topping the list. 

For the second year in a row, we reviewed the career sites of the Yello and WayUp 2024 Top Intern Programs list to see if what Gen Z wants is being communicated effectively in the recruitment process. 

2025 Top Intern Programs: Who Made the List? 

Founded by WayUp in 2017, National Intern Day highlights outstanding internship programs every year and serves as a reminder to employers to recognize how investing in a quality internship program can be an investment in their own future.

From the hundreds of thoughtful nominations, Wayup shared that the top 105 intern programs had a few things in common: 

• Pipeline development: Top companies saw their intern programs as an effective way to develop a pipeline of qualified candidates for early talent roles. The top program, Synchrony Financial, drives a near 100% rate of conversion from intern to full-time!
• Perks and benefits: In addition to offering paid internships, many programs offered additional perks like employee assistance programs, mental health resources, stipends, and wellness benefits. 
• Alumni Involvement: Including intern alumni in panels, mentorship opportunities, and general networking are a great way to provide professional guidance to current interns.
• Gathering feedback: Top programs put a heavy emphasis on gathering feedback during and after their programs to continue to evolve and remain attractive to future Gen Z talent. 

Interestingly, only 32 of 105 companies made a return to the list from 2023 to 2024. So, with a fresh list of top intern programs to analyze, we sought to see how they are representing their phenomenal intern programs on their career sites. 

 

What Changed from 2024 to 2025?

Across many of our analysis points, we saw a negative trend overall in employee story content between the 2024 and the 2025 list. Notably: 

• 18% less companies included real employees in photos on early careers page
• 15% less companies had a video on their early careers page
• Information about workplace flexibility, well-being/mental health support, and DEI dropped by 18%, 21%, and 25% respectively. 

To dive deeper into this change, we compared returning companies’ career site performance to those of the many newcomers to the list. With the 2023 list being made up of more familiar, established brands, the 2024 list included more emerging brand names less familiar to our team. 

In comparing the two groups, returning companies outperformed newcomers across most categories, including: 

• Real employee photos on early careers page (+8%)
• Early careers page including a video (+9%)
• Early careers page including text-based employee stories (+7%)
• Providing information on career growth (+13%), flexibility (+8%), and well-being (+8%)

This data would lead us to speculate that the emerging brand names, while successfully building a strong internship experience, may still be early in their employer brand strategy and have more opportunities to bring their intern experience to life on their career sites. 

In terms of the overall career site performance, below are our major findings.

Takeaway #1: Early Career Talent is a High Digital Priority

While on-campus recruiting and conference hiring still reigns supreme in early career hiring, organizations still need to communicate their programs and benefits on their career sites. True digital natives, Gen Z candidates will look for online information on the internship or early grad experience. A natural place they’ll land is the careers section on your site.

In our research, we found that 76% of companies on the Top Interns Program list have dedicated early career pages and 77% have an easy way to navigate to that page from their main career page. For a comparison, in our analysis of the 2024 Fortune 100 list we found that only 38% of companies had easy navigation to a dedicated DEI page. 

The overwhelming representation of dedicated early career pages tells us that this talent group is a high priority for companies, and that they want to make it easy for this digitally savvy group to learn more about beginning their career with that company.

Takeaway #2: Representation in Early Career Talent

When Gen Z candidates are looking at your organization’s content, they want to see people like themselves. Remember, they’re the most diverse generation yet so this means they need to see a wide range of backgrounds represented. 

In our research, we found that 55% of companies used real employee photos on their early career page, but only 41% of pages included a video. Positively, of those companies that included a video 81% featured real interns and early career employees.

Notably, use of text-based employee stories and testimonials on the early careers page stayed consistent year-over-year at 49%. Considering the gap that exists across other categories, we interpret this statistic to show that newcomers to the list understand the importance of sharing real stories from early career talent on your career site. Text-based stories can be an easier point of entry for an emerging employer brand strategy, so it makes sense that emerging brands would take this approach first.

Takeaway #3: Communicating What’s Important to Gen Z in the Workplace

There are five research-backed things that are important to Gen Z at work. And in our research, there is a significant gap between what they want and need with what is being communicated in early career content.

Career and financial stability

McKinsey found that 45% of Gen Z is concerned about the stability of their employment and is more likely to report that the pay they receive does not allow for a good quality of life. On top of that, 80% are already thinking about retirement and 65% say they wouldn’t take a job that didn’t offer retirement benefits (Handshake).

This means they are evaluating career opportunities for the long term—even if they don’t intend to stay at one company their entire career.

But when we evaluated the information on early careers pages, only 30% of companies offered any information about career or financial stability. This could be as simple as sharing that an intern program is a paid opportunity, or as detailed as information on retirement benefits for a full-time hire. 

Not having any information about the potential for a stable career is a big miss when this is one of the most critical aspects of work for Gen Z.

Social impact

A recent Deloitte report found that 77% of Gen Z respondents said it mattered to work at an organization whose values align with their own. It also found that Gen Z no longer forms opinions of a company solely based on the quality of their products but also now on their ethics, practices, and social impact.

So, how a company shows up in the world is important. 23% of early career pages had any mention of a commitment to sustainability or social responsibility. While low, this is actually a 4% increase from our 2023 report, indicating that newcomers to the list prioritized social impact in their career site content.

Even better if that insight into social responsibility comes via the words of your employees, like this quote from a Verizon intern. 

 

Career growth and learning opportunities

It’s no secret: career development and opportunities for growth are important to almost every generation. But when 87% of Gen Z say that learning and development benefits are important when evaluating a job opportunity, you think it would be talked about more in early career content.

43% of companies had any mention of learning and growth opportunities — compared to 39% of companies in 2023, the highest YOY growth in any category. This positive trend shows that companies are increasingly committed to showing early career candidates how they can grow their career long-term at that company. 

 

Flexibility and support for well-being 

Here are some startling facts about why well-being is so important to Gen Z:

• 90% say flexibility is an important factor when considering a job¹
• 78% say having a sustainable work-life balance is essential to their definition of career success¹
• 80% are highly or somewhat worried about burnout once they start a professional career¹
• 55% of 18- to 24-year-olds report having received a diagnosis and/or treatment for a mental illness²

These are significant reasons to share your organization’s commitment to well-being. But we found only 11% of companies had any mention of flexibility and 14% had any mention of well-being programs or mental health support. That’s a huge miss in early careers content.

Commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion

As the most diverse generation, Gen Z prioritizes diversity. Deloitte found that Gen Z is also the most likely generation to have individuals that identify as non-binary/third gender. To attract Gen Z talent, companies need to make sure people across all backgrounds are represented in their marketing content and show their commitment to an inclusive workplace.

Unfortunately, only 16% of companies included anything related to DEI on their early careers pages, a drop from 20% in 2023. While this may also be an indicator of the less sophisticated messaging of the newcomers to the list, the drop is also in line with the general trend away from DEI messaging that we’ve seen on the Fortune 100 career site list. 

We liked this video featured on Texas Instruments’ early careers page, highlighting how early career talent has experienced inclusion at work. 

 

Overall Impressions: Building an early careers content strategy with Gen Z in mind

After looking at all 105 career sites, our overall impression was that companies were putting an honest effort into their early careers pages. In fact, we often felt that the early careers pages were stronger than the general careers page — a testament to how important this talent group is to the health and future of an organization. 

Despite this general impression, the quality of content on the early careers page is lacking, with the five most important things to Gen Z in the workplace currently being overlooked digitally by more than half of the list of top intern programs. After working so hard to create a strong intern program, this represents a huge missed opportunity to bring the program to life and connect with future early career talent. 

To create content that resonates with this audience, share the stories of your past interns and early grad hires. They are best positioned to speak to your organization’s impact on team members like them, along with the programs and benefits that have mattered most.

 

References:

1. Handshake
2. McKinsey