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A decade-old alternative to college says it has a 90 percent success rate placing its 600 alumni in jobs. A graduate of the Praxis coaching program told The College Fix the career coaching and skill-building helped launch their careers.
Praxis is a “a six-month program where students immerse themselves in real-world business skills such as marketing, operations, and customer success,” Executive Director Jorga Leavitt told The Fix via a phone interview.
She told The Fix the 90 percent success rate includes successful placements in startups, sales, and marketing companies.
The Fix asked Leavitt how Praxis differs from traditional career guidance counseling and college classes.
“There are elements of it that do career guidance, but really we spend time skill building,” she said. “Our instructors are there to help facilitate things, but it isn’t necessarily like you are turning in something for a grade. They have projects and submit them for feedback, but it is really about gaining a skill, not trying to pass the class.”
The founders of the program, Isaac Morehouse and T.K. Coleman, wanted “an alternative for ambitious young adults that wanted a different path,” Leavitt said.
‘Praxis effectively changed my life,’ graduate says
One of those ambitious young adults is Silas Mähner, a self-described “country boy from Wisconsin.”
Mähner told The Fix he was working in insurance sales for about a year and a half prior to joining Praxis. While he was succeeding at his job, he wanted to get out of Wisconsin.
He saw the program as an opportunity for a network and a guaranteed job, most likely with a startup company. He took a risk on an upfront pay cut – but that has paid off since.
“I didn’t know if I wanted to go backwards in income, but I still saw the network and the alumni that would come out of it as valuable,” Mähner told The Fix during a phone interview.
Upon joining Praxis, Mähner spent about three months doing modules covering marketing skills and writing. He then spent two to three months applying to jobs, a process that he told The Fix involved the following steps: “Find an opportunity, research them, create a video pitch about yourself, send it directly to the hiring manager, and convince them to take a call.”
Though Mähner did not find the role type he was looking for during that process, in December 2019 he met a Praxis alumnus during an alumni “hangout call” who invited him to work as a recruiter in New York.
“Praxis effectively changed my life,” he said. “Through getting the opportunity to move to New York [in March 2020], I eventually ended up meeting my wife, and through the skills I learned I started my own business which I have been doing now for two years.”
Mähner now runs his own recruitment company called ErthSearch, a firm that helps CleanTech startups hire top talent. His team consists of seven part-time contractors and two full-time hires. The firm is set to reach $600,000 to $700,000 this year.
The Fix asked Mähner what skills, connections, or experiences from the program have been most valuable in his career so far. Mähner said that the ability to shape people’s perception of him by proving and clearly communicating his skills as well as a network of like-minded individuals who don’t “need the world’s approval to do life on their own terms.”
Mähner told The Fix that he would recommend Praxis for people who are considering not pursuing college.
“In my book, if somebody doesn’t want to be an engineer, doctor, or lawyer, and they’re just not sure what career path to take, I would encourage something like Praxis at the bare minimum,” he said.
He said further:
Worst case scenario is that you spend a year of your life and then go back and decide you have more clarity on what you want to do in college. Young people are forced into this idea of picking one career path early on. As a result they don’t live their dreams and they don’t do the things that they actually want to do because they don’t actually know how to discover what they care about in the first place.
Mähner told The Fix that Praxis has a job offer guarantee. “Anybody who goes into Praxis will get a job offer if they follow the steps offered.”
He called the training “zero risk” and “severely underpriced.”
Phase I of the Praxis program costs $850 for six weeks, and Phase II costs $6,650 for the six-month apprenticeship portion, according to the company website.
“The value is vastly more than the price you pay for it,” Mähner said.
Editor’s note: Clarifications about Mähner’s timeline of moving and a video ‘pitch’ were made.
