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Say goodbye to brochures that end up in the trash: Maximilian Petz and Patrick Bergher, two founders from the Zillertal valley in Tyrol, have launched LehreCheck, a digital platform that aims to connect teenagers with suitable apprenticeships and training companies. It is free for students, parents and teachers, built for the smartphone, and launches with a focus on Tyrol while being usable across Austria from day one. The founders want a change of image. “An apprenticeship is a first-class career path with endless possibilities. It is time it regained the standing it deserves,” says Bergher.
The Founders Know Apprenticeships From the Inside
LehreCheck is run by Check Network GmbH, based in Fügen in the Zillertal, and both founders are also its managing directors. Both completed apprenticeships themselves. According to the website, Patrick Bergher did a double apprenticeship as a metal construction worker and electrical technician at the energy company Verbund, earned his vocational baccalaureate and now studies architecture. Maximilian Petz trained as an industrial clerk at Binderholz and then worked in field sales.
According to the founding story, the idea took shape in 2023. A year later the two shelved the project because they saw too much competition. In the summer of 2025 they revived it. With no money for a software firm, they looked for a partner and found one in the fall of 2025. The website names the growth marketing agency Klixpert as a supporter, which sits at the same address in Fügen as LehreCheck. The founders then surveyed schools and companies, and the website went live in the summer of 2026.
How the Check Works
The core is three short tests that build on each other. According to the website, all of them are anonymous:
- Strengths check: 22 questions in about two minutes. The result shows nine strengths and a personality profile, still without any job titles.
- Field check: 28 questions in about three minutes. It yields the three best-fitting of ten working worlds, such as workshop and construction, IT and digital, office, health and care, or nature and animals.
- Job check: Another 28 questions match strengths, interests and personality against more than 350 apprenticeship occupations. The result is a list of top matches with a match score, plus open apprenticeships and trial placements from the region.
For each apprenticeship, the platform shows its duration, apprentice pay, starting salary after the apprenticeship and salary comparisons with similar occupations. A future check is meant to show why manual and social skills stay in demand in the A.I. era. Parents get their own information on career paths in dual vocational training, and teachers can use the tests in class from the 7th grade. Materials are free, according to the FAQ, and almost no preparation time is needed.
Where the Data Comes From
Open apprenticeships come from existing job portals. For listings, LehreCheck points to the Austrian public employment service’s job platform and to lehrlingsportal.at, including the date a listing was last seen. Companies are also meant to be able to register themselves.
LehreCheck uses A.I. for its database of apprenticeship occupations. According to the platform’s A.I. notice, it helps structure large amounts of data and spot outdated information. Every record prepared this way is then checked by hand by the editorial team. The matching also relies on algorithms that evaluate the answers from the tests. The A.I. makes no final decisions and serves as a “digital compass.” There is also a semantic search in which teenagers can describe in their own words what they enjoy. The salary figures are averages, according to the platform.
Part of the content is made the analog way: in the video series “Anpacken oder Abkacken” (roughly “Dig In or Fail”), the founders work half a day at a company and film the real working day.
How LehreCheck Could Make Money
LehreCheck is meant to stay free for teenagers, parents and teachers. For companies the picture is still open. To the question “What does it cost me?”, the FAQ currently answers only “Coming soon.” For now, companies can only join a waitlist, free and without obligation. Many features for businesses are marked “coming soon,” such as direct applications through the platform.
The FAQ for companies and HR departments hints at where this is heading. It describes the following building blocks, which lend themselves to paid products:
- Matching and applications: Companies are suggested to teenagers whose profile fits. Applications are meant to arrive via WhatsApp notification, and the aptitude test is meant to reduce no-shows and ghosting during trial days.
- Employer branding as a service: Companies upload photos or have someone sent over to film. LehreCheck says it handles the “translation into the language of young people” and the distribution, so profile building and ongoing content creation can be outsourced.
- Analytics for HR: HR departments are meant to see how many views and application clicks their content earns.
- Integration with HR systems: Applicant data is meant to flow directly into existing systems or be exported in a GDPR-compliant way.
That points to the classic models of recruiting platforms: paid company profiles on subscription, paid visibility among matching teenagers, fees per applicant placed, or content packages such as company videos. The founders have confirmed none of this yet. They clearly distance themselves from recruiting agencies: LehreCheck offers genuine career orientation and can therefore show teenagers transparently what daily life at a company looks like, the FAQ says.
A Crowded Market
The competition that put the founders off in 2024 is indeed large. The Austrian public employment service runs its own apprenticeship exchange and career orientation tools, and the Chamber of Commerce provides information through its career information portal BIC.at. lehrlingsportal.at also collects apprenticeship listings, and LehreCheck embeds its listings itself. whatchado has long been on the market with videos from working life and cooperates with Jobiqo on video job ads, for example. For the period after the search for an apprenticeship, specialized providers such as the Ausbildex platform support companies in training their apprentices.
LehreCheck bets instead on a combination of tests, regional apprenticeships and a tone aimed squarely at Gen Z. How well the matching works will only become clear once enough companies are on board and the business features go live.
