Seer Interactive Launches Local AI Optimization Academy

Why We're Paying Young People to Learn AI

A lot of companies right now are cutting entry-level roles. Some are replacing them with AI entirely. In the last year and a half, entry-level jobs in the U.S. have fallen by 35%. We want to give young people the opportunity to get ahead of this, so we're doing the opposite.

In total, we're investing approximately $18,584 into this program over 3 months to teach three interns about GEO. This number reflects not just the interns' compensation, but the dedicated time of our team members showing up to mentor, teach, and support them. 

We have pulled the ladder up after we built our experience and networks, and I think all of us need to take a good hard look in the mirror. We forget what it was like 10-20 years ago coming out of college and getting into the workforce trying to build a network and a reputation.

It was those early happy hours, those late nights in the office with other people, where we made relationships, heck 20% of people met their significant other at work or through work, that is where this happened, and now we’ve got those connections for life - we work from home, and watch entry level jobs get cut.

Fuck that.

Introducing AI Optimization Academy

Look, here's what's happening: we're bringing three, Yara Kemeh, Jamir Ong, and Bryan Gunawan, into Seer for 13 weeks this spring. They're coming in two days a week to work alongside our team on real AI research and testing on our site.

GEO (generative engine optimization) is one of the few fields that has a chance to grow, and we want to help put some people in it.

They will do real work, that we’re going to publish and test on our own site. The goal is to help them build a repeatable process for AI experimentation: hypothesis, to testing, to results.

If we can get that system right, yea, it helps us. We get fresh eyes, more experiments in market that we couldn’t get to, we get to share through thought leadership, and get stronger in GEO.

The point is that they leave with something real.

We will be posting their work, so if they crush you’ll see it and you might be able to hire a “Seer trained” person and you can see their tests. I will not be recommending people I wasn’t impressed by, our reputation matters too much to me.

Success looks pretty simple:

Three people walk out of here better than when they walked in: stronger skills, tangible work they can show, and a real sense of what it means to work in a data-driven marketing environment and a network.

We’re making it easier to grow their networks too, we have a lunch budget where we will pay for lunch for Seer team members to meet and engage with them.

If we've built something that works for them and for us, we'll run it again. We run experiments, that is what we do.

Why We're Doing This

We’ve spent years telling young people (and by “we”, I mean us, the tech community) just go learn to code. You could get jobs, they could go far if they could just keep their nose clean and do the right things.

And now, many of those young people have spent three or four years in those programs, doing the right things, staying positive, battling the distractions of growing up in the inner city, only to have us all say, “Sorry, AI came, we have no more jobs, no roles.”

I mean, honestly, it's quite simple.

We’ve always tried to show up for people in our community, especially young people trying to find their way into tech. We do mentoring, mock interviews, career conversations. But given where things are right now, I felt like we needed to do more.

If I could do something about it, I should.

We Have a Responsibility

A lot of young people did their part. And then the world changed and we pulled up the ladder on them.

When training young people to do GEO and to use AI, understanding that these same tools are making it easier to not hire young people does feel contradictory.

I'm looking at the market. The market right now is saying: if you know how to optimize for AI, you're more employable. So my thinking is that this will be the approach to take.

Everything is a test. Everything is an experiment. I need to be able to look at myself in the mirror and know I tried to do something for young people who are facing such poor job prospects. And then we'll let the data talk, we'll see the outcomes. We'll keep the stuff that works and get rid of the stuff that didn't and keep being better every day than we were yesterday.

Why Philadelphia? Why In-Person?

Yea, we could build our GEO Intern Program remotely. We’re a remote friendly company and could recruit nationally.

But if we’re going to start investing in young people, why wouldn’t we start in our own backyard, this city has its challenges and I want to be part of the solutions.

Especially when helping young people grow is also about networking, and overhearing conversations, and how other people are actively solving problems.

That’s where the learning happens, when someone can just walk by them and say “Hey, I’m working on this thing. You in?” Just yesterday 3 of them were over my shoulder while I banged away on an orchestrator called paperclip.

What We're Actually Teaching Them

Digital marketing and tech have always changed. So the tactics they learn today? A lot of that won’t matter in a few years, sorry guys, this is the industry we’re in.

That change means growth opportunities, and if they put in the work here, well, that will open doors for them. Because right now, everyone is looking for people who have actually tested, used, and understand GEO optimization. You can’t read your way into learning AI - it’s a contact sport.

But the bigger thing: Skills fade. Relationships don’t. That’s a big part of the reason we want them here, spending time with people and building human relationships.

What We're Learning From Them

Someone once told me that 10 years of experience can be wisdom or it can be baggage.

We're going to learn how quickly somebody can ramp up and learn the skills. I think sometimes the beauty of working with people early in their career is you get to see the gap between your intuition and your years of experience using the same tools that someone without those years of experience uses. How far can they get? It will be a very, very interesting experiment.

Especially in an AI world, young people need to own the fact that they do not have the expertise in the industry that their peers or older folks might have. That’s ok, they shouldn’t yet, else what the hell have we been doing all these years? But they can do is show how they’re closing that gap how they’re using AI to make themselves better. Show how you think. Show how fast you can learn. They should. But they also can show their portfolio on how they're going to play catch up to that experience, and how they use AI to make themselves better.

A lot of people, pre-AI and now, are so reliant on their experience that it’s inflated their perceived value. Time in seat is not the same as value. This is a tremendous opportunity for a young person with the advantages that AI tech gives them now.

Should You Do This?

Since I have no data yet, the pitch would just be around our corporate responsibility.

This company wakes up and exists to be good and do good for 3 groups.

Clients, Co-workers, and Community.

Especially for companies that spent time and money motivating young people, telling them that there were all these jobs in tech if they did the right things. Well, now rent's due. They did the right things, and they have minimal opportunities. Are we gonna shrug shoulder and say, sorry the world changed?

Doesn’t sound very innovative to me.

A lot of us have things we’ve been meaning to get to. Ideas that haven’t been tested, work that gets pushed down the list. Could you pair that with helping a young person?

Probably? But how many of us are going to say, "Well, I would if I could, but I can't"? I don’t buy that.

We all can find a way to do something. Take a young person under our wing. Bring them into the office. Get them some small tasks as a 1099. But you can't tell them to do all these things to make them employable, that took them years of resilience, and then when we finally get to hiring time, turn your back on them.

Check out our most recent community impact report, we look forward to doing more.