When more than 100 Houston-area employers helped shape the curriculum for WorkTexas, they delivered a message that most training programs rarely emphasize. Technical instruction, they said, is only part of what makes someone employable.
"The technical skills are about 30 percent of what employers want," says Mike Feinberg, co-founder of WorkTexas. "The other 70 percent all say the exact same thing. We need welders who can lay a bead and electricians who can bend conduit, but what we really need are people who get to work on time and people who can work on a team."
WorkTexas, launched in Houston in 2020, was designed around that feedback. Rather than treating workplace behavior as an afterthought, the program builds soft skills directly into the curriculum. The result is a training model shaped less by certificate counts and more by the realities employers describe every day.
Feinberg spent more than two decades helping build KIPP, the national charter school network. When he turned his attention to workforce development, he approached the problem differently from traditional training programs.
Before writing lesson plans or purchasing equipment, he asked employers what they needed most.
Yazmin Guerra, vice president and director of workforce development at WorkTexas, says the process always begins with a simple question.
"We start with the employer," Guerra explains. "If the employer says they have a need and would hire a certain number of students, we ask, if we could wave a magic wand, how many people could you hire tomorrow. Then we build the curriculum together."
More than 100 companies have participated in those conversations. Their input confirmed what Feinberg increasingly suspected. The disconnect between training programs and employer expectations rarely comes down to technical ability alone.
Beau Pollock, president of TRIO Electric, was one of the earliest industry partners. He shared his company's internal training materials and helped recruit instructors from his own workforce.
Pollock says Feinberg understood something many educators overlook. "He embraces the employer perspective but also understands the people going through the training and what they need to succeed."
During orientation sessions, Feinberg offers new students a blunt explanation of what employers look for.
"The virtues are your behavior and the choices you make," he told one cohort. "Employers want people who can work on a team, follow directions, and know the right thing to do."
Throughout the week he repeats the same phrase:
Show up. Be on time. The best ability is availability.
Punctuality is treated as a practical skill, not simply a personal trait. Career coaching sessions address topics often absent from formal education, including resume preparation, interviewing, workplace conflict, and professional communication.
WorkTexas training programs typically run about 11 weeks and require roughly 170 hours of participation. Most students attend at no cost through state and federal workforce development funding.
The program also extends beyond graduation. Career coaches check in with alumni every six months for at least five years, asking about employment status, wage growth, and workplace challenges.
"It is job coaching," Feinberg says. "Sometimes it is technical, but sometimes it turns into something closer to counseling. We ask if they are still in the same job, if they are switching jobs, what their salary is, and whether they need help navigating something at work."
That long-term focus produces data that many training programs never collect.
Among adults who remain employed for at least a year after completing WorkTexas programs, average hourly wages reach about 27 dollars. Out of roughly 800 alumni from evening programs, 545 are currently employed and about 100 have returned for additional training to move into higher-paying roles.
For Feinberg, those numbers matter more than traditional completion statistics.
Many workforce programs highlight how many students receive certificates, but they rarely track whether graduates actually find and keep jobs. Feinberg believes that emphasis misses the real purpose of training.
"We are employer focused," he says. "Our mission is to help people get jobs, keep jobs, and advance in their careers."
Guerra puts it even more directly.
"Success is not merely graduation."