NEW YORK, NY, Jan. 12, 2021—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.”

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.

“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.

Vault Provides Employer Profiles, Rankings, and Trusted Surveys

Vault launched in 1996 as the first site for employee reviews, company research reports, and insider advice for job seekers. Today Vault continues to provide its members—from students through career professionals—with the in-depth career intelligence they need and also connects job seekers with top employers in the law, consulting, finance, accounting, and corporate marketplaces. The company is best known for its influential rankings, career guides, and reviews of thousands of top employers and hundreds of internship programs annually. Vault has more than 500 higher education customers and reaches 7.6+ million users annually.

This acquisition strengthens Infobase’s mission to provide users with the appropriate information they need to build better careers. It positions the company to deliver even more worthwhile experiences to a more diverse audience that includes entrepreneurs, professionals, students, and educators in K–12, academia, corporate spaces, and more.

About Firsthand:

Firsthand is the premier career mentoring and engagement platform provider worldwide. For over 10 years, Firsthand has served leading academic institutions like Harvard, MIT, Oxford, and Cambridge.

About Infobase:

Infobase, a Centre Lane Partners portfolio company, is the esteemed provider of the Infobase Media Cloud and the Infobase Learning Cloud, which deliver award-winning multimedia reference content, online tools and technology, and professional development and training solutions to the school, academic, and public library communities.

Enabled by such well-known brands as Facts On File, Learn360, Credo, The Mailbox®, Films Media Group, Bloom’s, Ferguson’s, Vault, and the Infobase Learning Cloud, Infobase provides students, educators, librarians, corporations, and parents with the broad range of solutions they need to inspire, enable, and inform lifelong learners. For 80 years, Infobase has been a reliable, authoritative resource providing flexible options for accessing educational content whether in school, at the library, or at home. To learn more, visit www.Infobase.com.

Contact: Beth Ellard, Head of Consumer Strategy, bellard@legacy.infobase.com, or Fredrik Marø, General Manager, Vault & Firsthand, f@firsthand.co

Check out Infobase’s blog post on the acquisition and how it can spark authentic connections.

Check out the press release on PR Newswire.