Handshake Appoints Industry Veteran Asif Makhani as CTO to Drive Product and Platform Innovation

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 12, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Handshake, the leading site for college students to find a job and get hired, today announced the appointment of Asif Makhani as its new chief technology officer (CTO) to accelerate technological innovation and expansion of the company's product offering.

With around 20 years of experience leading technology and product teams at Google, LinkedIn and Amazon, Asif will oversee the development and execution of Handshake's product and technology roadmap. He will support the company's broader platform and data strategy, drive rapid innovation to support the needs of job seeking students, employers and higher education partners, and contribute to cementing the company's leadership in the early talent recruiting and job search market.

"Handshake has created a platform that has fundamentally transformed how companies recruit and hire early talent," said Makhani. "They've done this by creating a three sided marketplace with very strong value propositions for employers, institutions of higher education, and young professional job seekers alike. I am inspired by Handshake's mission to democratize opportunities for early talent, and I look forward to scaling the company's platform to further empower young people of all backgrounds to access and pursue meaningful careers."

Prior to joining Handshake, Asif was director and GM of Google Images and head of engineering at LinkedIn Learning Solutions. He led the creation of LinkedIn's Search Platform (Galene) and also spent 11 years at Amazon, where he was ultimately founder, director and GM of Amazon CloudSearch. Asif earned a M.S. in computer science from Stanford University and a BMath (Computer Science) from the University of Waterloo.

"With a broad cross section of B2B and B2C product development experience to draw on, Asif has a rich background of building highly scalable platforms to help companies during intense growth periods," said Garrett Lord, co-founder and CEO of Handshake. "Asif's commitment to our mission, along with the mix of his entrepreneurial and technical leadership is exactly what we need to take the company to the next level."

Handshake recently announced a $80M Series D financing round led by GGV Capital with participation from EQT Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Spark Capital and True Ventures. Earlier this year, the company announced that its platform grew to 17 million job seekers, over 1,000 institutions of higher learning and 500,000 employers, making it the largest early talent marketplace in the world. In 2021, Handshake will continue to shape the future of work by both serving an expanded universe of students across geographies and educational institutions, and building innovative solutions that revolutionize how employers attract and hire early talent to build a truly diverse and inclusive workforce.

About HandshakeHandshake is the number one site for college students to find a job. Today, the Handshake community includes 17 million students and young alumni at over 1,000 colleges and universities — including 120+ minority-serving institutions. We connect up-and-coming talent across all 50 states with 500,000 employers recruiting on Handshake — from every Fortune 500 company to thousands of small businesses, nonprofits, startups, and more. Handshake is democratizing opportunity and ensuring college students have the support they need to find a great job and kick-off a meaningful career regardless of where they go to school, what they choose as a major, and who they know. Handshake is headquartered in San Francisco and has offices in Denver and London, UK.

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SOURCE Handshake