Handshake Hit by Hiring Freeze
Handshake vs Mercor
This was the moment Handshake learned its core market was tied to employer headcount, not just student engagement. When tech, finance, and other white collar employers froze hiring in late 2023, they cut the software seats, recruiter campaigns, and event spend that fund campus platforms. Handshake still had the schools and students, but the buyer side weakened fast, which is why revenue growth fell from 60% in 2022 to about 6% in 2024.
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Handshake makes money mainly when employers pay for messaging, targeting, analytics, ATS integrations, and premium recruiting workflows, while universities pay roughly $8,000 a year for career services software. That means a hiring slowdown hits the higher value employer spend first, even if student usage stays high.
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The broader labor backdrop turned against job boards. Indeed data showed remote friendly metros and remote capable roles seeing sharper posting declines in 2023, and recruiting software operators described shrinking recruiting teams and budgets as companies posted fewer roles and received more applications per opening.
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That downturn also explains why Handshake moved into AI data work. Its network of PhDs, master's students, and graduates could be sold into model training jobs for math, law, physics, and coding, creating a second revenue stream that depended on AI lab demand instead of campus recruiting budgets.
Going forward, the campus recruiting product is likely to grow more like hiring infrastructure than a consumer network. The bigger upside comes from turning Handshake's verified academic graph into multiple monetization layers, recruiting software in good labor markets, and expert labor supply for AI labs when hiring markets are soft.