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Handshake’s cofounders say their goal is help students from all backgrounds receive the same access to employment opportunity regardless of gender, race, socioeconomic status or type of educational institution attended
Courtesy of Handshake
Garrett Lord was a sophomore at little-known Michigan Technological University when he and two classmates drove across the country in a rental Ford Focus, trying to sell schools on an idea: a LinkedIn for college students.
“We realized that the hiring market is just not fair at all,” says Lord, 31. “And, to be real, it’s just so boring showing up at a career fair and hoping that you’re going to catch the eye of some random recruiter. We wanted to solve the problem by building a platform that students really love and have fun using, and that helps all students receive the same level of opportunities as if they were to go to one of the Ivy League schools.”
In 2014, Lord and his friends-turned-cofounders—Ben Christensen, 28, and Scott Ringwelski, 28—launched Handshake, a network to help millions of students from all backgrounds get hired and launch their careers, no connections or experience required. Three years later, they landed on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Consumer Tech list.
On Wednesday, the San Francisco-based startup announced that it had secured $80 million in Series E funding from investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners and Spark Capital, among others. With total funding of $235.5 million, CEO Lord says Handshake’s valuation is more than $1.5 billion.
Handshake counts more than 18 million students and recent graduates among its users. After signing up for free accounts, they can create profiles and receive personalized job recommendations, as well as invitations to virtual career events. They can also connect with alumni of their schools and employees of prospective employers, just as they might on LinkedIn.
More than 550,000 employers—including Amazon, Tesla and Bank of America—and 1,200 universities use the platform. Employers are able to post job listings for free and recruit entry level candidates from a talent pool more diverse than what they might find visiting college campuses, Lord says. For access to premium features, such as brand pages and analytics, employers can pay an annual fee that starts at $10,000, but varies based on their annual entry-level hiring, the number of Handshake seats they have and how complex or specific their hiring needs are.
Universities pay an all-in-one fee that ranges from $1,000 to more than $20,000 to use Handshake, based on the size of student enrollment. On the platform, they can manage virtual and in-person career fairs and track student outcomes and offer acceptance rates.
Despite the pandemic’s effect on the hiring market, Handshake facilitated roughly 98 million virtual student-employer connections last year, Lord says. He expects that the startup, which has more than doubled its revenue every year for the past three years, will see $100 million in revenue by 2022—an important milestone on Handshake’s quest to rival competitor LinkedIn.
“LinkedIn is really good as a mid-professional career tool,” Lord says. “But we wake up every single day intently focused on the unique challenges of people building and starting their career.”
Last year, the Handshake team said it facilitated 98 million virtual student-employer connections.
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With the new funding, Lord says he hopes to create new features on Handshake that will help students and recent graduates develop the skills they need to further their careers. Last year, LinkedIn announced its own global skills initiative, offering workers access to free educational resources.
Lord also wants to expand Handshake’s international presence (it currently operates in just the U.S. and U.K.) and user base. He sees a future where the platform helps job seekers land their first internships and full-time positions, as well as their second, third and fourth roles.
Natasha Stough, the Americas director of campus recruiting at Ernst & Young, says the platform has helped her diversify her company’s talent pipeline. With Handshake, she says Ernst & Young can recruit talent from across the country, rather than just from a select group of schools.
“For Gen-Z, it’s more about what they want. They are digital natives,” she says. “You start to connect some of the dots and say, ‘Do we have to do college recruiting the way we’ve done it for the past 30 years?’ No. We can start to leverage technology and use a platform like Handshake to open up that funnel and diversify that talent.”