Strict work hours. Burger flipping. Toilet scrubbing. Dish washing.

When mentioning high-school jobs, such responsibilities spring to mind. But seniors Tal Cohen and Channing Hancock’s jobs for Facebook.com belong to a totally different dimension.

Cohen and Hancock were recently hired by startup Facebook.com as private consultants and interns. Out of numerous interviews with local students interested in working for the company, Facebook selected Cohen and Hancock for the job, along with senior Jonathan Cheung and Menlo Atherton senior Emanuelle Benkoski.

Their tasks involve surveying high school students for input on the website and for additional elements that students would like to see on the site. Unlike most employers of high school students, however, their employer gives them flexible work hours. Most of their work can be done at home, and they are only scheduled to meet with their employers about once every two weeks.

But the flexible work hours are not the best part of being one of Facebook’s private consultants. Since Facebook is still a relatively small company, Hancock and Cohen get to see their ideas being implemented on the site firsthand.

“It’s a great opportunity to work for a start-up,” Hancock said. “It’s just really cool to see my ideas in action on the site.”

Cohen, too, enjoys seeing the website grow. “It’s interesting to see how the website develops and how the website comes about,” she said. “It’s cool to see how it all comes together.”

On first glance, however, one may not fully appreciate all the work and time spent toward creating a website. Cohen said that there is more effort than meets the eye. “It takes a lot of thought to build a new feature,” she said.

According to the Facebook.com website, Facebook was originally founded by Mark Zuckerberg in downtown Palo Alto in the beginning of 2004 as a way for local college students to socially connect with one another, but it rapidly evolved from being a local network to a national network that linked both college and high school students across the country.

By registering with Facebook, students are automatically assigned to a specific branch that only includes other students from the same school. Facebook is like an exclusive version of MySpace. It allows the creation of groups and friends lists. It also features an online photo album service to share photos with friends and a “wall” to leave messages for friends.

Like Andrew Carnegie and the steel industry, perhaps Hancock and Cohen may eventually rise up and take charge of this growing corporation.