The Playbook for College Alums to get Good Jobs
In this interview on the Future of Education podcast, host Michael Horn talks with serial entrepreneur Devin Shane about his career‑spanning ventures, focusing on Student Playbook and the nonprofit Shalom Learning. Shane recounts his first for‑profit venture selling carpet remnants to college students in the 1980s, which sparked a lifelong focus on the college market. He then explains Student Playbook’s mission to advance lifelong alumni engagement and career success by helping recent graduates (second‑through‑fourth‑job seekers) find hidden job opportunities through alumni networks, live recruiter access, and employer‑paid placement services. The conversation details the market problem of underemployment, especially among first‑generation and under‑resourced graduates, and how traditional career services lack the resources to address it. Shane outlines Student Playbook’s competitive advantage—leveraging trusted alumni office relationships, offering free services to students and alumni, and aggregating non‑public job listings via the Careershift platform. He describes the company’s pivots during COVID‑19, the acquisition of Careershift, and the shift from a life‑skills model to an alumni‑focused placement model that generates revenue from employers. The interview also covers Shane’s nonprofit, Shalom Learning, which provides an online Hebrew‑school LMS, curated curriculum, and teacher training, growing from 7 students to over 22,000 across 11 countries. Finally, Shane shares advice for aspiring entrepreneurs, emphasizing the five startup success factors (timing, team, idea, model, cash), the value of fast‑following, and the importance of taking action. The discussion highlights the unique value proposition of Student Playbook, its early pilot results, and broader insights into building purpose‑driven ventures in education.
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Welcome to the Future of Education. And now here's your host, Michael Horne. Welcome to the Future of Education, where we are dedicated to building a world in which all individuals can build their passions and fulfill their human potential. And today, to help us think about aspects of that, is a longtime friend, Devin Shane. He's the CEO and founder of, of Student Playbook. And he's going to tell us all about that, but also about his journey in education and entrepreneurship, creating opportunities every step of the way for people to succeed in different parts of the student life cycle. Devin, first, great to see you. Thanks for being on the Future of Education.
My pleasure, Michael. Thanks for having me.
You bet. So we're going to launch into our morning warmup, if you will, a little bit of a lightning round of questions. I'd love you to start talking about, you know, your, your background. Right. I said you're a longtime entrepreneur. In the lead up here, you literally got your start of entrepreneurship in and around the world of higher ed. One might say the dirty underbelly of higher ed. But I'll let you tell why I chose that word dirty in a moment. But tell us your own story into entrepreneurship and education.
Sure. So I went to the University of Pennsylvania and I played soccer there. And I brought up a remnant for my cold linoleum floor dorm room. And my teammates comment, where'd you get it from? My dad was a builder and I brought up a couple remnants and gave it to my teammates. But the following year, because a lot of people commented during the year, I put 112 remnants in a 14 foot U haul and in six hours, Michael, I set up in front of the freshman dorm, the quad, during move in and I sold out. I grossed $6,000. I netted $3,000. This is in 1986. So I'm dating myself. But to put things in perspective, I held two jobs that summer. I was a waiter and a counselor. And I made $1,000. So you don't have to be a mathlete. 10 weeks, two jobs, 1,006 hours, $3,000. And that was my start. My senior year. I was doing this on 21 campuses east of the Mississippi. I went down to the carpet mills in Dalton, Georgia, and I lived with nine guys who sold on college campuses for me. And they said, shane, you got a great carpet business, but really you're going to go into being a carpet salesman? And I said, nope, I'm going into the College Market. And 38 years later, I'm still here.
Yeah. So I think it's just a great Story because you never know where these journeys start and how you move into it. And we'll talk about some of this later, but you've incubated and built for profits. You've built nonprofits. You've built, as you like to joke, for profits that don't make a profit. I think you use more elegant language when you say it, but your latest is you've created this company called Student Playbook, really focused on what you call this career shift focus. But. But give us the elevator pitch of what is Student Playbook, and we'll get into some of the details as we go down the journey.
Sure. And as. As I do say, when people ask my background, I said, I've started multiple for profits. I've started a couple not for profits, and I have a few. No profits. That's euphemism. They didn't work out so well. Hopefully this one falls into the first bucket. But Student Playbook really was created. We call it Playbook advances Lifelong engagement and career Success, helping students and alumni do three things, navigate new career paths, connect with other alum, and advance their careers.
Perfect. So that's the elevator pitch, if you will. Let's break that down a little bit. What does it look like? And what's the big problem that you're solving for?
Sure. So first of all, I talk about you need three things. And you can already see I'm a big fan of list of threes when you start a business. One, is there a market? You know, will the dogs eat the dog food? And clearly there is. Two, do you have the skill sets to support the problem that you're trying to solve for. And then three, do you have a competitive advantage or a moat associated with. And I'll start there. Our competitive advantage, Michael, is working with the alumni office, which provides us their endorsement and access to their young alum from 25 to 45. There's no cost to the alumni association or the young alum, the job seeker. And we have three attributes that differentiate us from. From job boards or LinkedIn. But ultimately, the value proposition is we help these students and young alum get jobs. Because every 2.8 years now, students and alum are changing jobs. But the first part is we provide access to a live recruiter. We work with five national recruiting firms, so there's a high touch. The second is, shockingly, most people don't know this. I didn't a year ago when we got into this. Only 30% of jobs are socialized, which means 70% are not readily available. We have a platform called Careershift, which we import jobs and internships into our database and our platform. In addition, alumni at the school will provide us unique job opportunities as well. So that's the second benefit and then the third, we provide services at no cost, such as assessments, webinars, access to resume review and LinkedIn evaluation. So the business model is the employer pays us to help place students that are looking for their second, third or fourth job with experience. The employers are happy to pay for 75,000 to $150,000 it second, third, fourth jobs. And what I really love about this opportunity and this business is I like to do good and do well as a company.
Yeah. So as I look in this and we shift into our second segment of the show, the work cycle, we dig a little deeper on this. It strikes me, if I understand it, that you're basically saying alumni, after they leave college, they're in that first, second job, there's a challenge, they're sort of, they figured out their footing, how that professional world works. They're trying to find that next job. The alumni offices, it seems to me of the colleges you're working with, want to add a lot more value to the former students. Right. And they're not just asking for gifts and they're giving a lot more, you know, through the work you're doing, making it much more tangible what this sort of alumni network and connections really means. And then third, the employers, you're obviously finding great talent for them with all this value added services that appears free for the students and the alumni associations or offices themselves of the colleges. What I hadn't heard you say before, and I think it's really interesting as you think about it, is you connect that and I think this comes from Julia Freeland Fisher's work around the all these jobs are not being listed and yet. So it really matters who you know. And a lot of these opportunities are through the alums themselves at other companies and so forth or the companies themselves. Making it known to your, the alumni you're working with. Tell us a little bit more about that because that, that seems actually pretty important, right. Like LinkedIn. You see a job opening, you're basically saying that job opening may never appear on the web. We're going to get you it before you even know about it. That seems like a unique value proposition if I'm understanding it.
Yeah. Michael, can I take you on the road with me? Because you clear clearly get it. You know, I've thought about copywriting the saying it's what you know and who you know, I'm a big fan of the genius of and, and the combination of the two. You know, the term social capital is, is so important. And I'm going to speak for, I'm going to elaborate on your last question and I'll roll in to the other because I want to touch on the big problem. And you know, it really is stunning that over 50% of students that graduate from four year colleges are underemployed, which means they make less than their market rate. In addition, the largest demographic graduating today is now first gen and they don't have the prior experiences that we take for granted. Having a parent that has gone through the process and understands the importance of networking and the value of a college degree. Also, many graduates are under resourced and underserved. I think there is a misunderstanding that just because you graduate from college that you are not under resourced and that's not the case. So lastly, everyone else normally doesn't know what they want to do in their first job. And again, as I mentioned earlier, they're changing almost every three years. We are helping young alumni with lifelong career support and, and professional development. We're helping alumni associations build alum engagement with our services, which are so important. And our brand promise, which I'm really proud of, is to make every alum better off even if they don't get placed by our programs. But we have other services that they will benefit from. Let me stop there. There's obviously a lot of to unpack, but I'll pause and get some of your questions and comments.
Yeah, no, and I, I mean there's a lot of interesting things there, as you said, Devin. And one of them that strikes me is, is this point you made of the underemployment and then the demographics of these students and how they don't have this reservoir of social capital at their disposal. I talk to us a little bit more about, you know, who else is in this space. How are you different perhaps from what else is out there? Because on the one hand, like I hear you saying these things and I'm like, well, every alumni office ought to be tapping their, you know, alums. It's an incredibly valuable resource in the employer market and yet we know by and large them in the career offices are not doing these things. So why is what you're doing novel and who else is in the space?
Yeah, so obviously an important consideration. So first we are leveraging the trusted relationship that schools have with their constituents to help students and alumni navigate the career journey and provide them with Value added career services while meeting the talent demand of employers, workforce development organizations and staffing agencies. You know, I want to reference that my carpet business turned into started as campus carpets. We've got you covered. I haven't used that line in a long time. And then I got into on campus marketing, which I'm proud to say is 35 years old. I sold it 20 years ago and there are multiple programs. But I use the same model today that I did 35 years ago. We get the endorsement, the affinity, the imprimatur of the university. We provide a frictionless, really a work free, no cost to the organization. In this case it's the alumni association. And there's no cost to the young alum or the alumni themselves. So it's really a model that is somewhat unique because they don't have to pay on both sides, the university side and the job seeker side. And we are increasing the level of engagement for the alumni association by in essence white labeling their service. And we're really creating opportunities for alumni that they're not getting candidly from either their alumni association or their career services. There are only, there's only one counselor per 1800 students. It's really difficult to place. So again, let me stop there for a second. There's a lot more that I can talk about related but I will turn it back to you, Michael.
Yeah, no, it's super interesting and obviously the cost value prop is a big piece of this for the alumni offices. They don't have to pay anything. Students don't have to pay any or excuse me, alums don't have to pay anything. They get access to these services. I want to like, how's it going so far? What have you learned along this journey of starting up the company?
Yeah, so you see my gray hair before I started it wasn't nearly a salt and pepper and I've got a lot of scar tissues as well. But let me, let me first, before I touch on what, what I've learned, let me elaborate a little more on the, the problem and the solution. I mean, we're in a very dynamic, as you know, better than most, economic and education environment and we want our graduates to be successful in the world of work more broadly. The country needs an educated workforce that gets a positive ROI from the investment in higher education. We believe we can make a positive impact by serving institutions and individuals in new ways by reducing friction in the connection between education and employment. In addition, there is tremendous concern that colleges and universities don't provide the level of resources to help Students get good jobs. There are two places that that generate revenue on college campuses, as you know, enrollment on the front end and alumni on the back end. Unfortunately, the career center, which reports into student affairs, doesn't generate any revenue, which is part of the problem, unfortunately. Alumni associations normally ask for two things from alum come to the reunion, which last week was my 35th, you can do the math. And two, donate. Alum want career support and professional development and strong networking. So our evidence is that the alumni associations are valuing this program, which is in a pilot stage right now. But also we're getting hundreds of job seekers from each school looking for recruiter support. We call this proof of concept. And working on the different revenue streams, such as getting paid by the employer to place students. So it's actually working really well. The alum association really values this turnkey, frictionless program. And the alum or the job seekers are raising their hand and saying, we want to talk to a live recruiter. We want some unique job opportunities and we want some of these services and at no cost. And it's actually the proverbial win win. So let me elaborate a little more on the lessons that, that we've learned on the journey. And you know, a lot of people say when they have success, we had a grand slam. That's what a lot of people use. It was a home run. When things don't work out so well, it's either called a learning experience, which is euphemism for we learned a lot. So with that, we started Student Playbook In February of 2020, Michael, two weeks before I realized Corona was not just a Mexican beer. We could not test and pilot for over a year because we could not get to schools. When we eventually got to schools, my original premise, which I haven't talked about yet, but I'm going to admit now, was Gen Z lack life skills for three reasons. One, they spend 10 to 12 hours a day on screen time. Two, you have helicopter parents, which I resemble that comment sometimes, not always. And accreditations not based on soft skills, life skills, what I like to call success skills. They're based on the hard skills. So I thought I could use the same model. Have the university allow me to offer this to parents this time. For students transitioning from incoming freshmen to graduating seniors, I miss two things. And that's why you test and pilot and you try not to fall in love with your own ideas. It doesn't matter what I think, Michael. It's what the market thinks. And two things did not support my original premise One, schools do not want to outsource student development, which I should have realized that. So that was one. And the second, parents really don't value as much life skills as they value their child getting a job. One's a nice to have, the other one is a need to have. So fortunately we did two things that really helped. One, we bought a company called Careershift which has over 200 relationships with career centers. It has a great technology platform which I talked about. And the third thing, it has a terrific founder that's still with the organization. The second thing that we did last year was was we started focusing on the alumni association and helping young alum get jobs, which again is more the need to have versus a nice to have of the life skills and finding a model where the employer who was willing to pay anyways not for a first year grad because they don't have the experience, but they are willing to pay for second, third and fourth job. So trying to change consumer behavior or trying to change model is very difficult. If you can take something such as an employer is willing to pay for placement and incorporate it a little differently, that's what we've done successfully. So we've learned a lot. We've had to pivot and we continue to learn by listening to the different constituents, the alumni associations, the job seekers, the recruiters and the employers. Again, I'll stop there.
No, super interesting, Devin. And something to follow. I want to shift to our third segment specials and up front you mentioned that you've founded a bunch of things you've alluded to the for profits, the nonprofits and the no profits. But I want to go into one of my favorites, which is I've had the privilege of being on the advisory board of which is a nonprofit, Shalom Learning. So as we start to wrap up here, maybe give us the problem that Shalom Learning was designed to tackle and how that's gone so far.
Yeah, thanks, Michael. And you were incredibly helpful in getting that. Started with a great book that I think is probably over 10 years old now. Blended, which was my original executive director's bible, which is about as high a compliment as you can get. So I started the organization in 2011. Wow. 12 years ago because I hated Hebrew school and my children hated it as well. It's a really bad model and I'm generalizing, but the majority of people don't like driving 15, 30 minutes for an hour and a half after school of six hours. And you have curriculum that's not well packaged, that's not compelling and you have teachers candidly that only teach three hours a week. How good can you be? And most of them do it because they make $5 more than their day job. So being a edtech entrepreneur and a serial entrepreneur I thought there was a better way and I ended up creating Shalom Learning focused on three areas. One, creating an LMS learning management system because Gen Z their community Although a lot of the synagogues didn't like this initially when I said the these students, they want to be online and in person is a value but there are also many rural areas that don't even have the option. So one, creating an LMS because that was a more compelling community for 7 to 13 year olds. Two, we took curriculum and we curated best in class out there and we repackaged it and that was really valuable. And the third, quite frankly I should have valued this more initially but I do now 10 years later it's teacher training and really teach them how to be effective both online, in person, blended in the classroom as well as out of the classroom. And what I like to say is I took 19th century teaching as a modality with 20th century teachers and 21st century learners and close the gap and and I'm proud to say we started with seven students. The first year in 2019 we had 7,000 students and we were the beneficiary of COVID because the market came to us when all the synagogues were closed. We had this successful platform and now we have over 22,000 students. We're in 11 countries predominantly supporting military families whose children had nowhere to learn. It's basically an online Hebrew school and we educate over 3,000 teachers. So I'm really proud of the success and most importantly the efficacy for the student, for the teachers and for the synagogues is better than the old model.
Phenomenal stuff I will say if my kids temple tunes in you all do a great job. You're the exception that proves frankly the rule that Devin started out with which is that most of us Hebrew school experience is not all that great but but tremendous thing that you've built. Last segment as we wrap up here. It's closing time and as a serial entrepreneur I know you take seriously not only the ventures you start and the impact you make and the success you have and as you say, you know doing well by doing good but you also take seriously helping others start on their own entrepreneurial journey and solving meaty problems. And so I suspect there's a few ways you could take this but give us give for those tuning in who Fit that profile. They want to start something. They want to solve a problem. Give us some parting advice and words of wisdom. Sure.
Thanks. So I'm going to give one anecdote and one best practice. But let me start at a high level. I love to learn, I love to teach, and I really value model the masters and best practices and I actually like to solve problems. But candidly, I'd rather be a fast follower than a pioneer because pioneers get arrows in their back. But let me start first with a anecdote or I'm actually going to end with the anecdote. Let me start with the best practice. So there is a great TED talk on YouTube. It's by. I'm having a senior moment. Bill Gross. There we go. He talks about the five keys to a successful startup and he uses empirical Data to measure 100 of his startups with 100 of some of the best startups from Airbnb and Uber and Yahoo. Well, Yahoo probably doesn't fit that category. But he, he really goes through in ranks. And I'm going to give the five most important in order but I encourage you to. He does it more eloquently than I do, but for the benefit of a quick lesson in order of importance. One is timing, two is team, three is the actual idea, four is the model, and five is cash. And a lot of people ask why is cash last? And the simple answer is if you have the first four, cash will follow. So that I believe is a best practice in terms of evaluating the importance of a startup. And you've heard about one of my for profits campus carpets which turned into ocm. You've heard about one of my not for profits. I like the term for profit. I don't like the term not for profit. I like to call it for purpose. There's only one difference between a for profit and a for purpose and that's tax status. They should be run very similarly. But one example of a no profit that I think you will appreciate, Michael and your listeners. It's called Campus Maryland. It was telemedicine for the college market, both behavioral health and if you had a physical injury that 7 out of 10 can be addressed with telemedicine. I was 10 years in one pandemic too early. So I was not the beneficiary there, unfortunately. But shalom learning was. So with that my last anecdote or my last comment, when I speak about entrepreneurship, I tell the class or the group, if you get one lesson from me, one takeaway, this is the most important. So there's a group of maybe 25, 100 students or employees in chairs. And I'll say to somebody in the front row, I say, michael, I'd like you to stand up and look under your chair. And you'll stand up, look under your chair and. And you'll pull out. I taped a dollar bill underneath. I probably should have for visual benefit. Let's say if I have a dollar bill. So, Michael, you would be going like this. And I'd say, michael, do you know what that dollar bill represents as it relates to entrepreneurship? And you'll say a bonus. And I'll say no. You'll say lunch money. I'll say maybe, which is a nice way of saying no. I say, this is the most important lesson regarding entrepreneurship. That dollar represents you got to get off your behind to make a buck in this world. And ultimately, that's the key to entrepreneurship.
Love it. Love it. I love that story. I've used it since you first told me. Credit you, of course, but Devon, Shane, Devin Shane, thank you so much for joining us on the Future of Education and the work that you are doing around helping people navigate this increasingly complex, complex world of careers and frankly, adding a lot more value to every step of that process. Thanks, Devin.
MICHAEL thank you.
And we'll be back. Next time on the Future of Education.
