WayUp, the Leading Job Marketplace for Early Career Professionals, Acquires Looksharp

NEW YORK and SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- WayUp and Looksharp today announced a definitive agreement for WayUp to acquire Looksharp. The acquisition will create the most advanced job marketplace that will help every college student and recent grad find the right job or internship.

"Gone are the days of job sites that consist of white pages with blue links shown in chronological order," said Liz Wessel, Co-founder and CEO of WayUp. "With the combination of WayUp and Looksharp's unique supply both on the job side and the candidate side, this acquisition will expedite WayUp's growth all the more quickly, as we'll now have more than 3 million U.S. student and recent grad profiles on the platform."

WayUp has quickly become the leading place for college students who want to hold the reins to their futures. On WayUp, students and recent grads know that they will only see jobs they're qualified for, saving them time spent applying to countless jobs where their application will likely go unviewed. According to WayUp, 23 percent of WayUp job applications result in an interview, compared to industry standard of 2 percent of job applications resulting in an interview. This has resulted in WayUp placing 1 in every 3 applicants in a job - an unprecedented statistic for most open job platforms.

While WayUp has created a community for its users who are extremely well retained, the team is aware that 73 percent of job seekers in the U.S. start their search in Google. WayUp already has over half a million users whose WayUp profiles show in one of the first spots on Google search results (for example: https://goo.gl/G6mOXp) before other major job platforms like LinkedIn. Looksharp's full coverage of most college-related job searches on Google is what led to WayUp first taking notice of the company.

Not only that -- the synergy was undeniable, as both companies had the same mission to help college students land jobs in a much more efficient way than ever before. They both believed in building a brand that connected directly with job seekers, which they have seen allows them to retain share of mind among their users beyond graduation.

"When I met with Liz and JJ, we realized that both of our companies wanted to change the way students secure jobs, and how businesses find student talent," said Andrew Maguire, CEO of Looksharp. "Since we both believe in the power of building a direct-to-consumer company, versus selling into universities or professors, we were able to easily map out what a deeper partnership would look like."

Wessel wants WayUp to do what Spotify did for music: when you login, you receive a personalized playlist, can listen to songs directly on the platform, all the while resonating with Spotify's powerful brand. No one, in Wessel's opinion, has created this job seeker experience. "It's hard to think of a single brand or product that college students resonate with, which helps them through possibly the most intimidating process of their lives: looking for work."

"People are over going to outdated, non-personalized job sites. It's time for people to see personalized job feeds, not tens of thousands of uncurated links that lead to mobile-unfriendly job pages," said Wessel.

Terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed. Looksharp was founded in 2009 and has raised $10.48M to date.

About WayUp
WayUp is the leading online job marketplace exclusively for U.S. college students and recent grads. Launched in September 2014, WayUp is the only site where employers can post a job to a targeted (and filtered) audience of students at any U.S. college. WayUp currently has more than 3 million profiles of students and recent grads who represent 5,200 campuses in the U.S., with 25-30 thousand students signing up each week. WayUp works with startup to Fortune 500 companies with innovative approaches in the way in which they recruit millennial talent, and places 1 in every 3 applicants in a job.

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SOURCE WayUp

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