Handshake (company)

Handshake (company)
Name	Handshake
Type	Private
Industry	Software, Employment, Technology
Founded	2014
Founders	Ben Wildenborg; Leah Busque; Garry Tan
Headquarters	San Francisco, California, United States
Key people	Garrett Lord (CEO); Ben Wildenborg (COO)
Products	Career services platform, Employer marketplace, Analytics

Handshake (company) Handshake is a career network and recruiting platform that connects college and university students with employers through a centralized marketplace and campus partnership model. Launched in the mid-2010s, the company sought to modernize campus recruiting practices used by institutions such as Harvard University, Stanford University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology while competing with legacy services tied to organizations like National Association of Colleges and Employers and platforms such as LinkedIn and Indeed. Handshake grew by integrating with career centers at institutions including University of California, Berkeley, University of Michigan, and University of Texas at Austin, attracting venture capital from investors active in Silicon Valley and global technology markets.

History

Handshake was founded in 2014 amid a wave of start-ups aiming to digitize student recruitment and talent discovery. The founding team drew on experience from Y Combinator, Launchpad-style accelerators, and early-stage technology incubators that had supported companies like Dropbox, Airbnb, and Stripe. Initial pilots occurred with regional public institutions and liberal arts colleges before expanding to flagship public universities such as University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign and University of Washington. Over successive funding rounds, the company scaled its engineering and sales operations, hiring personnel with backgrounds from Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and consulting firms such as McKinsey & Company and Boston Consulting Group. Handshake navigated regulatory and compliance questions related to student data privacy alongside frameworks like laws modeled after Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act norms while negotiating partnerships with student organizations and alumni associations at institutions such as Columbia University and University of Pennsylvania.

Product and Services

The platform offers a student-facing mobile and web application for creating profiles, searching internships and full-time positions, and applying directly to employers. Features mirror functionality seen in products from LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and Monster but are tailored to campus recruiting cycles used by institutions like Northwestern University and Duke University. For career services offices at universities, Handshake provides employer engagement tools, event management, interview scheduling, and analytics dashboards inspired by business intelligence practices used by companies like Tableau and Looker. Employers such as Goldman Sachs, Google, Accenture, PwC, and Deloitte use the employer portal to post roles, conduct recruitment events, and manage candidate pipelines. The platform integrates authentication and single sign-on systems employed by campus IT departments at places like Princeton University and Yale University and supports accessibility and inclusivity initiatives championed on campuses like Spelman College and Howard University.

Business Model and Funding

Handshake's revenue model combines subscription fees from higher education institutions, employer job-posting fees, and premium services such as targeted recruitment campaigns and analytics subscriptions. Early-stage financing included seed and Series A rounds led by venture capital firms known for backing enterprise and consumer platforms, similar to investors behind Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and GV (formerly Google Ventures). Later rounds attracted participation from growth-stage funds and strategic corporate investors with ties to recruiting technology and human capital management software used by companies like Workday and Oracle. The company balanced growth investments with monetization partnerships that echoed commercial arrangements seen between Handshake competitors and major corporate clients, while maintaining contracts with public flagship universities and private liberal arts colleges.

Partnerships and Customers

Partnerships span academic institutions, employers, and technology integrators. Universities in the University of California system, members of the Ivy League, and state university systems adopted the platform to centralize student-employer interactions. Corporate customers include multinational firms in finance, consulting, technology, healthcare, and nonprofits, mirroring client rosters of Amazon, JPMorgan Chase, Ernst & Young, Bain & Company, and Microsoft. Handshake also collaborated with alumni networks, career services consortia such as NACE, and student-government organizations to coordinate on-campus recruiting events and diversity recruiting initiatives promoted by groups like National Society of Black Engineers and Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers. Integrations with applicant tracking systems from vendors like Greenhouse and iCIMS facilitated employer workflow adoption.

Market Position and Competition

In the campus recruiting niche, Handshake positioned itself as a modern alternative to legacy university career portals and broader employment marketplaces. Major competitors include LinkedIn, which serves professionals across career stages; university-specific platforms and alumni networks at institutions such as Cornell University and MIT Alumni Association; and recruitment technology vendors serving enterprise talent acquisition teams. The market also features specialized players in early-career hiring and internship placement, comparable to platforms like WayUp and services offered by staffing firms such as Randstad and Adecco. Handshake's emphasis on campus partnerships, student experience, and campus career-service workflows created differentiation, while regulatory scrutiny and competition for employer budgets from multinational corporations influenced strategic priorities.

Corporate Governance and Leadership

Corporate governance combined a board of directors with executives experienced in technology scale-up, enterprise sales, and higher-education partnerships. Leadership teams included alumni of technology companies and venture-backed start-ups, as well as executives with prior roles at university career centers and consulting firms. Board members and advisors often had ties to prominent investment firms in Silicon Valley and leaders from higher-education institutions who guided adoption strategies at campuses such as Brown University, Vanderbilt University, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Management emphasized data privacy, student outcome metrics, and partnerships to maintain market credibility among both academic and corporate stakeholders.

Category:Employment websitesCategory:Education technology companies