Gen Zers are up against a dire job market as companies slim their headcounts and entry-level opportunities dry up in the wake of AI. However, Match Group CEO Spencer Rascoff is breaking from the pack and betting on early-career talent. Shortly after assuming the dating empire’s top job last February, the chief executive revived a shuttered internship program in order to bring more young workers into the fold.
“Two or three months after I started, I called my head of HR and said, ‘I’m just curious about the summer intern program. When do the interns arrive?’” Rascoff tells Fortune. “And he’s like, ‘Oh, no, we can’t. The last CEO canceled the internship program last year to save money.’”
“That was the craziest thing that I’ve ever heard,” Rascoff continues. “We build apps for Gen Z. Our main demographic audience is 18 to 22-year-olds—of course, we need as many of these folks around our halls as possible.”
Rascoff believes that Gen Z employees are essential to the success of the parent company behind dating services like Tinder, Hinge, Match.com, and OkCupid. Even hiring young interns for a couple of months to hang out in the kitchen, “spread vibes,” and chat to people around the watercooler would be meaningful for the business, Rascoff says. So the CEO quickly led the charge to implement a slew of initiatives geared toward Gen Z talent—including bringing back its summer “Tindership” program.
Instead of launching formal advertising to promote the opportunity, Rascoff decided to simply post it on his LinkedIn and social media accounts. And once it was up on the website, Match Group was “overwhelmed with interest.” More than 30,000 candidates applied for just 27 open spots, meaning less than 0.09% were accepted for the internship—more selective than any Ivy League college. Rascoff says the influx reflects young people’s dire need for job opportunities, but also believes it was turbocharged by the “resonance” of the Tinder and Hinge brands, as well as growing interest in working for consumer social media companies.
“It probably speaks a little bit to the challenges of job seeking among early career people, I’m sure,” the CEO says. “But I’d like to believe that it mostly speaks to the quality of the company that we’re at. I’m so excited.”
The program officially kicks off on June 1, and the 27 interns will work alongside Tinder’s engineering, product, design, marketing, and analytics teams through August 28. The $8.6 billion company has revamped the program’s curriculum, executive coaching and mentorship, and educational programming. Rascoff also added they’re going to have a pickleball day where interns invite their managers, as well as have people over at his house to foster “inspirational conversations and mentorship.”
While employers pull back internships, Match Group’s CEO is all in
For Gen Zers entering the workforce, landing an opportunity feels increasingly like a high-stakes lottery. Internship postings on early-career job platform Handshake were down 16% earlier this year, and have been declining since 2023, according to an analysis from the company. And several big employers, like Tesla and Meta, have curbed or entirely scrapped their internship offerings.
However, the early-career gig is still a priority for the Match Group CEO. Rascoff explains that internships played an impactful role in his nearly three-decade career in business. Initially, the serial founder thought he would be a reporter; while interning at Bloomberg, he said he was inspired by Mike Bloomberg’s conversations with budding professionals. He also interned on Wall Street at Bear Stearns before launching his whirlwind career, co-founding Zillow, teaching at Harvard University, and now leading the world’s largest dating conglomerate.
“I remember how impactful that internship was for me in helping me figure out how to start my career,” Rascoff says. “I’m trying to do the same for these folks. But obviously we’re going to get much more out of them than they’ll ever get out of us, because we need their voices in the room when we’re making these product decisions.”
Rascoff says Match Group is taking a ‘contrarian approach’ to the AI-Gen Z narrative
Gen Z workers have been under fire for years. First, young professionals were branded as lazy and entitled for their unconventional, post-COVID approach to office life; now, their value within a company has been called into question as AI automates the tasks of junior staffers. Rascoff says that Match Group is flipping the script on the importance of Gen Z in the workplace.
“There is a trend in especially in technology—but really in corporate America—to hire fewer early-career people. The thinking goes, ‘AI can do much of the work of an early career professional,’” the chief executive explains. “Match Group has a very contrarian approach on that topic.”
Among technology companies, the percentage of employees aged 21 to 25 was cut in half between January 2023 and August 2025, according to an analysis by compensation management software company Pave last year. These Gen Z workers accounted for 15% of the workforce at large public tech firms a few years ago, but last summer they represented only 6.8%. Plus, Big Tech companies reduced the hiring of recent college graduates by 25% in 2024 compared to the year before, according to a 2025 study from SignalFire.
Match Group plans to go against the grain, leveraging Gen Z’s tech skills rather than letting AI tools weed them out.
“I intend to hire more early-career people who are coming out of college as AI natives,” Rascoff continued. “They’re using AI for everything, and I’d much rather have an early career person without fully-formed habits of having been in the workplace for a long time without AI tools.”
