Landing your dream tech job is becoming increasingly difficult as competition heats up. In order to bridge this gap, Pathrise is looking to support people looking for a tech job through their Pathrise fellowship.
Pathrise, which launched in early 2018, has adopted a new model of preparing talented people for the workforce. Rather than training people in skills to get a job (which is what bootcamps do), the Pathrise Fellowship trains students in the hiring process. This model, which they refer to as a “career accelerator,” combines both mentorship and training to help young people land interviews and find jobs at technology companies.
Many people looking into this program have wondered “is Pathrise worth it?”, or even “is Pathrise legit?” This review will take a look at the Pathrise program to help you make the best decision for your career.
The Pathrise Fellowship Is Helping Skilled Workers Succeed
Coding bootcamps and universities take on the role of educating students in the skills they will encounter in the workforce. However, while some bootcamps provide long-term career support to help graduates find jobs, most universities do not provide comprehensive career counseling. Thus, students can graduate with skills, but little to no interview skills. That’s where the Pathrise Fellowship comes in.
Trained Mentors
Pathrise, whose workshops last eight weeks, pairs people with personal mentors who provide them with the interview skills they need to find a job. These mentors partner with students during week one, and they become the students’ main point of contact throughout the program. These career mentors are either extensively trained in industry recruiting and hiring or they are industry veterans. Whatever their background, they are fully equipped to help students reach their full potential.
Hiring Process Training
Throughout the Pathrise Fellowship, students go through a series of workshops based on topics that may come up throughout the hiring process. For example, students participate in resume and online profile workshops, which help them craft a resume and online presence that adequately showcases their skills to employers. Students also learn about how to source opportunities and thrive in a coding interview, as well as other key components of the technical hiring process.
Towards the end of the program, students are taught about salary negotiation, which is often one of the most difficult parts of the hiring process. Many people, especially those with experience, are reluctant to ask for more money in job interviews. A survey by staffing firm Robert Half found that only 39 percent of professionals said they tried to negotiate their salary during their last job offer.
During this stage, a mentor will help students negotiate for more money and better benefits and review each job offer in-depth. This, in turn, helps students figure out what they should demand in a salary negotiation to ultimately get a fair job offer.
This career support is important, as many students do not receive comprehensive technical career support in college. As a result, they may not know how to present themselves to prospective employers. Even students who graduate from a bootcamp with career support may want to seek guidance from someone who specializes in the technical interview process and finding a job in technology.
Pathrise has found a gap in the market; there are plenty of skilled technical workers, but many do not know how to find a job in tech. Their model appears to be working, as they serve many demographics of people, from undergraduates seeking their first job to career advancers with a decade of experience.
Pairing Career Support with Technical Guidance
In addition to providing career strategy support, Pathrise helps students understand the technical side of the hiring process. Indeed, finding jobs, optimizing resumes, and interviewing are common in any job search. However, engineers—the company’s target market—need to know more than that. During a technical interview, candidates are expected to showcase their skills in front of other people and do so in a way they may not have encountered before.
To ensure students don’t get caught off-guard in the technical hiring process, Pathrise provides technical strategy support. Students are paired with a career mentor who specializes in industry recruiting and hiring, as well as an industry mentor who works at a top technology company. According to Pathrise, industry mentors include veterans of Google, Dropbox, Amazon, Salesforce, Airbnb, Stripe, and LinkedIn. The industry mentor helps students figure out what topics they need to know to prepare for technical interviews, and shares specific and actionable advice to students.
Furthermore, the industry mentor helps students break down problems they can expect to encounter in an interview—covering topics such as searches, binary trees, and data structures. Technical counsel, like the fellowship itself, continues until fellows land a job. Continuous training ensures that fellows are fully prepared for technical interviewing.
Industry Tracks
Thus far, Pathrise has launched seven different industry tracks to support its students. These tracks cover software engineering, product design, data science, web development, marketing, sales, and product strategy and operations—all common careers in the technology industry. These specialized industry tracks ensure that students learn the skills they need for their unique career path, which should maximize their chance of success in their job search.
Although the Pathrise program lasts eight weeks, the company continues to provide support and workshops to alumni until they find a job they are satisfied with. Indeed, Pathrise’s benchmark for personal success is student success: when a student gets hired in a good job, Pathrise concludes their career support. Students also benefit from weekly live video sessions and an online platform developed by Pathrise, which supports them throughout their tenure as students in the Pathrise program.
Pay Only When You Succeed with Pathrise
Pathrise works with many college students and training program graduates who may have outstanding loans to pay off, so making an upfront payment is not always feasible. As a result, Pathrise offers a financing method similar to a variety of coding bootcamps. Instead of paying upfront, students only pay for the Pathrise course through an Income Share Agreement (ISA) once hired.
Thus, Pathrise’s ISA allows the company to support students who may otherwise not be able to afford to hire a company to help them find a job. This gives the Pathrise fellowship a way to stand out amongst other companies in this space.
Breaking Down Pathrise’s Income Share Agreement
After a fellow finds a job and begins working, they will pay five to nine percent of their salary for up to 24 months. This means that unless students are satisfied with the job they found, they are under no obligation to make payments to the company after one year. This practice aligns with a broader trend in skills development— where students are only interested in paying for a service if it helps them succeed.
Unless Pathrise can help someone find a job, most likely with a salary boost, then the company itself is on the hook for any potential losses. This gives Pathrise “skin in the game,” which encourages them to invest as many resources as necessary to help students find the right job for them.
The five to nine percent income share agreement makes sense for the company. According to Pathrise, their support not only helps students find better job opportunities, but their negotiation advice may also account for a salary increase of 10 to 20 percent. Thus, students who successfully graduate from the Pathrise fellowship should earn a salary boost that covers the entire cost of their ISA. Pathrise also reports that they place 98 percent of their fellows in a job within one year. What’s more, they claim to have grown seven times in revenue in the last year.
Pathrise is Scaling Career Mentorship to More Skilled Workers
Pathrise has developed a competitive advantage in a crowded market because they are a network-focused business. As students progress through the Pathrise program, they will be able to give Pathrise more data surrounding the hiring process.
Additionally, as students find jobs due to the help they have received from Pathrise, the company will be able to improve its brand among employers. This will, in turn, help them pair future students with high-quality companies. To complete the loop, Pathrise graduates could become hiring managers in the long-term and hire new Pathrise fellows.
The company also has an advantage because their founders are young. Co-founders Kevin Wu and Derrick Mar are 24 and 25, respectively, so they have first-hand experience in the intricacies of the current technology hiring market.
Pathrise’s Growth Potential
The company is going after a big market: tens of thousands of people graduate from bootcamps and computer science degrees every year. Pathrise also reports that there are over 1.4 million white-collar workers in their early 20s who are looking to switch jobs: a request which they aim to support. Pathrise recently announced that they have increased the size of their seed round to $3.2 million. This growth is expected to help them hire more mentors, invest in research and development, and expand their career tracks offered to students.
The Pathrise fellowship has the potential to change the way that people in technology find jobs. What’s more, Pathrise is positioned to expand their services to other career tracks in technology. Their career and technical support model sets them apart from more generic career support firms that may not be aware of the subtleties of the technology hiring process. The business is trying to cultivate a network that will allow them to develop a compounding competitive advantage at scale. This will place them in a good position to provide mentorship to even more tech professionals in the future.
FAQ
Pathrise doesn’t charge any tuition costs until you have landed a job. Once you have begun working, Pathrise charges 5-9% for up to 24 months.
Because students only pay once they are hired, there is a high incentive for Pathrise to help its fellows find career success. Pathrise pairs students with industry mentors working at top technology companies like Google, Dropbox, Amazon, Salesforce, Airbnb, Stripe, and LinkedIn.
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Pathrise workshops last eight weeks, but the program continues to provide workshops and mentorship to program graduates until they find a job they are happy with.
Pathrise offers its services free of charge until you land a job. Once a Pathrise finds a job that they are satisfied with, they are expected to pay five to nine percent of their salary for up to 24 months.
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