Infobase Announces Acquisition of Firsthand, Alumni Engagement and Mentoring Platform

Infobase announced that it has acquired Firsthand, the premier career mentoring and engagement platform for students and alumni, and will be merging it with its Vault brand, the leader in employer rankings and career guides.

“We are thrilled to welcome Firsthand to the Infobase family and leverage the extraordinary synergy between the two companies,” said Paul Skordilis, president and CEO of Infobase. “Fusing Vault’s career content and Firsthand’s engagement platform will create a next-generation employer branding and career readiness platform that engages today’s job seekers more mindfully by offering real human connections and frontline perspectives.”

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Firsthand Connects Students and Alumni to Foster Career Readiness

Boasting 80+ higher education customers and 650,000 student and alumni users, Firsthand’s all-in-one engagement platform is the meeting place for virtual career and enrollment fairs, mentoring, job postings, groups, forums, a fully fledged alumni directory, and more. An innovator in the rapidly growing student success space, Firsthand makes it easy to connect applicants, students, and recent graduates with student ambassadors, alumni mentors, and career coaches from Firsthand’s network of 10K+ working professionals. Connections made by Firsthand’s custom matching algorithm launch a virtuous cycle of engagement. Mentored students are 18% more likely to graduate with a full-time job, and a majority of mentored students become engaged alumni who are mentors themselves and more likely to donate to their alma maters.

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“Firsthand and Vault sprang from the same idea: to level the playing field by giving everyone access to the insights and assistance required to land great jobs and opportunities,” said Fredrik Marø, Firsthand’s founder and CEO, who will be taking over as General Manager of the combined entity. “Pairing Vault’s renowned employer rankings and robust career content with Firsthand’s engagement platform means we can deliver unmatched career intelligence more contextually, on a grander scale, and to new audiences. Vault and Firsthand are a fantastic match, and we’re incredibly excited to be joining forces.”

“For students and alumni, Firsthand’s algorithm instantly matches them with mentors who share similar backgrounds and who’ve worked in the locations, industries, roles, and employers where the mentees aspire to work. For employers, Firsthand’s dashboards are able to surface and segment potential job seekers by age, location, gender, education, and other criteria. The result is better informed job seekers and employers and more meaningful connections, not to mention less stress and more time and money saved,” explained Skordilis.

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